Point Regarding Books Trains And Buttered Toast

Title:Trains And Buttered Toast
Author:John Betjeman
Book Format:Paperback
Book Edition:Special Edition
Pages:Pages: 342 pages
Published:June 14th 2007 by John Murray Publishers Ltd (first published June 1st 2006)
Categories:Nonfiction. Travel. Writing. Essays. Poetry. European Literature. British Literature. History
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Trains And Buttered Toast Paperback | Pages: 342 pages
Rating: 3.69 | 102 Users | 15 Reviews

Explanation As Books Trains And Buttered Toast

This wonderful book is a record of most of the best of John Betjeman’s radio talks for the BBC - most of them broadcast in the 40s and 50s, the golden age of wireless. Betjeman had a boundless capacity to delight and inspire and is undoubtedly one of our best-loved poets. His great passion was for architecture, particularly churches and he is reckoned to have visited more than 5,000 in his time. Eccentric, enthusiastic, whimsical and often belligerent he is at home here with his tales of trains, buttered toast, hymn-writing vicars and Regency terraces.

For me this is a book full of nostalgia (a word that Betjeman disliked, said it reminded him of neuralgia! He preferred the word sentimentality). Nevertheless, in these pages I am reminded so much of my own carefree childhood, spent in Kent in the period following the end of the 2nd World War. Here are a few lines taken from ’Coming Home, Or England Revisited’, broadcast on Thursday 25th February 1943:

’For me, at any rate, England stands for the Church of England, eccentric incumbents, oil-lit churches, Women’s Institutes, modest village inns, arguments about cow parsley on the altar, the noise of mowing machines on Saturday afternoons, local newspapers, local auctions, the poetry of Tennyson, Crabbe, Hardy and Matthew Arnold, local talent, local concerts, a visit to the cinema, branch-line trains, light railways, leaning on gates and looking across fields….’

These talks are a fitting memorial to what set Betjeman’s pulses racing and what he feared the loss of and are no longer of course a guide to what can be seen today. But as a picture, a snapshot of past times in the country I love, this is nostalgia (sorry, sentimentality) at its best.

Thank you Sir John. I loved it.

Mention Books During Trains And Buttered Toast

Original Title: Trains and Buttered Toast: Selected Radio Talks
ISBN: 0719561272 (ISBN13: 9780719561276)
Edition Language: English

Rating Regarding Books Trains And Buttered Toast
Ratings: 3.69 From 102 Users | 15 Reviews

Judgment Regarding Books Trains And Buttered Toast
A sentimental journey for Anglophiles. Evocative descriptions of the architecture and ambience of England before the first world war. By turns charming and insufferable. The whiff of privilege taints its point of view from time to time, but Betjeman wasn't wrong about the soul-deadening properties of urban sprawl. And besides, these were radio pieces, not meant as literary essays.

Broadcasts from the golden age of the wireless describing a bygone era with sensitivity and a poet's eye.

Abandoned on page 51 of 342. Just not meThis wonderful book is a record of most of the best of John Betjemans radio talks for the BBC - most of them broadcast in the 40s and 50s, the golden age of wireless. Betjeman had a boundless capacity to delight and inspire and is undoubtedly one of our best-loved poets. His great passion was for architecture, particularly churches and he is reckoned to have visited more than 5,000 in his time. Eccentric, enthusiastic, whimsical and often belligerent he is at home here with his tales of trains,

I've never been a huge fan of Betjeman but wasn't sure why. I suppose I bought into the commonly held view that he was a twee conventional rhymer. Although this book of collected radio talks (inc some of his poetry) may have gone some way to disabusing me of the worst that that implies, it is tame stuff. Part of the problem is that much of the material is so specific - Bristol, Bath and the wider west country - that if you don't know the area yourself, it doesn't hold the attention. I accept

This is a series of radio broadcasts done by Betjeman around the country, each one focussing on a different area. The talk could be about an area in general or a specific town or village. I have to say that I much prefer his poetry. I found his talks very repetitive and he clearly didn't think much of the Victorians and their buildings. Any form of modernisation was anathema to him, I dread to think what he would have made of architecture and what is passed by planning committees these days.

This wonderful book is a record of most of the best of John Betjemans radio talks for the BBC - most of them broadcast in the 40s and 50s, the golden age of wireless. Betjeman had a boundless capacity to delight and inspire and is undoubtedly one of our best-loved poets. His great passion was for architecture, particularly churches and he is reckoned to have visited more than 5,000 in his time. Eccentric, enthusiastic, whimsical and often belligerent he is at home here with his tales of trains,