a time of sanity. Imagine similar today.e.g People walking around with their Pads and smart phones looking down.The noise of recorded Music, car and other environmental pollution.If only I could travel in time. It certainly wouldnt be to the future.
What a wonderfully sober, honest and courageously indeterminate closing message; John refuses to be polarised by the interviewer who attempts to lodge him down the meaningless cul-de-sac of 'belief'. I love that John was disinterested in the news, I personally identify with his sentiments concerning this matter. John Betjeman, sharing his own meditations on the inevitability of aloneness (or all-one-ness was his hopeful message?) is one of the most comforting aspects of his legacy: at least we aren't alone in these reflections. Thanks for the upload.
So moving at the end there. A kind of swan-song. When I look around today at what has become of our people and our culture, I am utterly, utterly mortified. What would Sir John have thought of it all..? Where is his hope? What has not laying down any law ultimately led to? British society tyrannized by a relentless deracination into a debauched corporate consumerism.. British cities blighted with crushingly banal architectural expediency based upon the same consumerism.. the replacement of a largely undemonstrative British social character with the rancid pathologies of narcissism and petty self-aggrandisement.. drugs, alcoholic barbarism tyrannizing the British city-centres and towns every weekend, the British media now largely a tool for propagating the pathology of the dumbed-down, emotionally infantile viewer or reader.. dress, a matter of clownish indecency, or flatulent utility.. manners crushed by a dog-eat-dog mentality.. popular culture a writhing cage of simian febrility.. tradional, daily public and private language a rat-a-tat Browning machine gun of of expletives.. personal and familial financial prudence decimated by loony casino credit.. banks turned into pubs and discos.. pornography scattered throughout social culture like lurid confetti.. the idiot, the mercenary, the conceited fool, the vulgarian, all lauded in the public realm as heros and role-models.. Vulgarity as a modus operandi of existence.. social catastrophe's inculcated by welfare statism gone mad.. politics a mere PR exercise by swingeing incompetents.. the capital city , once a marker of English identity, now it's antithesis- a mere crucible for globalist machinations.. and so on. All one has to do is open ones eyes when leaving the house, or turn on a TV or open a newspaper when inside at home. It's all there, right in front of the nose. Can you imagine a Betjeman soul even surviving in this glutinous amniotic fluid of accelerating barbarity? No, neither can I.. God help us all.
Yes, the ending brought me to tears. Conversely, Betjeman lived in a selfish bubble borne of his parents', and subsequently his own, privileged social background. Sir John's indifference to "the news" is telling of his complete hostility to the merest notion the plight of lives destroyed by strife, war, poverty, terrorism; and of intervention, reform of any kind. He was a man of his class and time; he wanted time to stand still. Yet I continue to love him. Why?
@@AntPDC I sort of got the feeling that he was a little bit out of it in that final piece, I got the impression that he could wax lyrically on any question asked of him, but seemed to be fading away into his own thoughts... I love John's poetry, his observations, his people watching. We miss him... But he was in his bubble, and I love his view from that bubble, I never saw hostility to others in his poetry, but viewing life from his own perspective which may come across as pompous, but never hostile.
He was living in the truth of reality - and it made him so dejected w/ rays of hope keeping him alive.
We all become lonely Betjeman's, for all that is left... is a longing for the past.
Betjeman's observations and witty comments are always on the mark. Have to love him! He was a national treasure!
Betjeman, one of Britains greats.
He's always a pleasure...thanks.
I've always loved John Betjamin.
What a lovely chap he was
What a joy this was to find.Hankered for a long time to find something as wonderfully english in a time and place that what we are ,, normal.
A gem. Thank you.
a time of sanity. Imagine similar today.e.g People walking around with their Pads and smart phones looking down.The noise of recorded Music, car and other environmental pollution.If only I could travel in time. It certainly wouldnt be to the future.
he had a perspective that embraces everybody living in those far off days that somehow becomes very close.
What a wonderfully sober, honest and courageously indeterminate closing message; John refuses to be polarised by the interviewer who attempts to lodge him down the meaningless cul-de-sac of 'belief'. I love that John was disinterested in the news, I personally identify with his sentiments concerning this matter. John Betjeman, sharing his own meditations on the inevitability of aloneness (or all-one-ness was his hopeful message?) is one of the most comforting aspects of his legacy: at least we aren't alone in these reflections. Thanks for the upload.
So moving at the end there. A kind of swan-song.
When I look around today at what has become of our people and our culture, I am utterly, utterly mortified. What would Sir John have thought of it all..? Where is his hope? What has not laying down any law ultimately led to?
British society tyrannized by a relentless deracination into a debauched corporate consumerism.. British cities blighted with crushingly banal architectural expediency based upon the same consumerism.. the replacement of a largely undemonstrative British social character with the rancid pathologies of narcissism and petty self-aggrandisement.. drugs, alcoholic barbarism tyrannizing the British city-centres and towns every weekend, the British media now largely a tool for propagating the pathology of the dumbed-down, emotionally infantile viewer or reader.. dress, a matter of clownish indecency, or flatulent utility.. manners crushed by a dog-eat-dog mentality.. popular culture a writhing cage of simian febrility.. tradional, daily public and private language a rat-a-tat Browning machine gun of of expletives.. personal and familial financial prudence decimated by loony casino credit.. banks turned into pubs and discos.. pornography scattered throughout social culture like lurid confetti.. the idiot, the mercenary, the conceited fool, the vulgarian, all lauded in the public realm as heros and role-models.. Vulgarity as a modus operandi of existence.. social catastrophe's inculcated by welfare statism gone mad.. politics a mere PR exercise by swingeing incompetents.. the capital city , once a marker of English identity, now it's antithesis- a mere crucible for globalist machinations.. and so on. All one has to do is open ones eyes when leaving the house, or turn on a TV or open a newspaper when inside at home. It's all there, right in front of the nose.
Can you imagine a Betjeman soul even surviving in this glutinous amniotic fluid of accelerating barbarity? No, neither can I.. God help us all.
Yes, the ending brought me to tears. Conversely, Betjeman lived in a selfish bubble borne of his parents', and subsequently his own, privileged social background. Sir John's indifference to "the news" is telling of his complete hostility to the merest notion the plight of lives destroyed by strife, war, poverty, terrorism; and of intervention, reform of any kind. He was a man of his class and time; he wanted time to stand still. Yet I continue to love him. Why?
Nice posting but you were far too succinct.
@@AntPDC I sort of got the feeling that he was a little bit out of it in that final piece, I got the impression that he could wax lyrically on any question asked of him, but seemed to be fading away into his own thoughts... I love John's poetry, his observations, his people watching. We miss him... But he was in his bubble, and I love his view from that bubble, I never saw hostility to others in his poetry, but viewing life from his own perspective which may come across as pompous, but never hostile.
His last t.v.piece.