✽ In 1941, John Betjeman became British press attaché in Dublin.
To begin with, he disliked his time there, but increasingly he loved his three years in the country and took to signing off his letters, ‘le meas mór, do chara dhílis, Seán Ó Betjemán’.
And now a new book, Betjeman in Ireland, by Dominic Moseley, covers his visits to the country, from his first in 1925, as an Oxford undergraduate. Over 50 years later, he made a charming BBC programme, John Betjeman’s Dublin.
Betjeman wrote many poems in Ireland - and amusing letters, too. In 1943, he wrote to Myfanwy Piper, wife of artist John Piper:
‘Still do you run barelegg’d across the yard?
Still would you pillow with athletic curves
My bald, grey head upon your breasts?
Your…
