Middlesex
Ancient and 1889 extent of Middlesex
Geography
Status	Ceremonial county (until 1965) Administrative county (1889–1965)
1801/1881 area	181,320 acres (734 km2)[1]
1911 area	148,701 acres (601.8 km2)[2]
1961 area	148,691 acres (601.7 km2)[2]
HQ	see text
Chapman code	MDX
History
Origin	Middle Saxons
Created	In antiquity
Succeeded by	1889: part to County of London 1965: Greater London and parts to Surrey and Hertfordshire
Demography
1801 population - 1801 density	818,129[1] 4.5/acre
1881 population - 1881 density	2,920,485[1] 16.1/acre
1911 population - 1911 density	1,126,465[2] 7.6/acre
1961 population - 1961 density	2,234,543[2] 15/acre
Politics
Governance	Middlesex Quarter Sessions (until 1889) Middlesex County Council (1889–1965) Within the Metropolis: Metropolitan Board of Works (1855–1889)
Banner of arms of Middlesex County Council
Subdivisions
Type	Hundreds (ancient)

Middlesex ( /ˈmɪdəlsɛks/; abbreviated Middx) is one of the 39 historic counties of England and the second smallest by area.^[3] The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time.^[4] The county was significantly affected by the expansion of the metropolitan area of London in both the 18th and 19th centuries, such that from 1855 the south-east was administered as part of the metropolis.^[5] When county councils were initially introduced in England in 1889 about 20% of the area of Middlesex, along with a third of its population, was transferred to the County of London, and the remainder formed a smaller county, in the north-west, under the control of Middlesex County Council.^[6]

In the interwar years urban London had further expanded, with increasing suburbanisation, improvement and expansion of public transport,^[7] and the setting up of new industries outside the inner London area. After the Second World War, the population of the County of London^[8] and inner Middlesex was in steady decline, with new population growth only experienced in the outer suburbs.^[9] After a Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London, almost all of the original area was incorporated into an enlarged Greater London in 1965, with small parts transferred to neighbouring Hertfordshire and Surrey.^[10] Despite the disappearance of the county council, Middlesex is still used as an area name and was retained as a postal county; which is now an optional component of postal addresses.^[11]

History[link]

Toponomy[link]

The name means territory of the middle Saxons and refers to the tribal origin of its inhabitants. The word is formed from the Anglo-Saxon, i.e. Old English, 'middel' and 'Seaxe'.^[12] Its first recorded use was in 704 as Middleseaxan.

Early settlement[link]

Map of Middlesex, 1824

There were settlements in the area of Middlesex that can be traced back thousands of years before the creation of a county. ^[13] The first reference to the region under the name of Middleseaxon^[14] is in a charter giving the Bishop of Waldhere Twickenham. ^[15] This was nearly 200 years before the official creation of the counties of England in 900 A.D. ^[14]

Middlesex was recorded in the Domesday Book as being divided into the six hundreds of Edmonton, Elthorne, Gore, Hounslow (Isleworth in all later records),^[16] Ossulstone and Spelthorne. The City of London, which has been self-governing since the thirteenth century, was geographically within the county, which also included Westminster, which had a high degree of autonomy. Of the six hundreds, Ossulstone contained the districts closest to the City of London. During the 17th century it was divided into four divisions, which, along with the Liberty of Westminster, largely took over the administrative functions of the hundred. The divisions were named Finsbury, Holborn, Kensington and Tower.^[17] The county had parliamentary representation from the 13th century. The title Earl of Middlesex was created twice, in 1622 and 1677, but became extinct in 1843.^[18]

Economic development[link]

The economy of the county was dependent on the City of London from an early time and was primarily agricultural.^[4] All manner of goods were provided for the City, including crops such as grain and hay, livestock and building materials. Tourism in early resorts such as Hackney, Islington and Highgate also formed part of the early economy. However, during the 18th century the inner parishes of Middlesex started to function as suburbs of the City and were increasingly urbanised.^[4]

The introduction of radial railway lines from 1839 caused a fundamental shift away from agricultural supply for London towards large scale house building.^[19] Tottenham, Edmonton and Enfield in the northeast developed first as working class residential suburbs with easy access to central London. The line to Windsor through Middlesex was completed in 1848, to Potter's Bar in 1850 and the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways started a series of extensions into the county in 1878. Closer to London, the districts of Acton, Willesden, Ealing and Hornsey came within reach of the tram and bus networks, providing cheap transport to central London.^[19]

Following World War I, the availability of labour and proximity to London made areas such as Hayes and Park Royal ideal locations for the developing new industries.^[19] New jobs attracted more people to the county and the population continued to rise, reaching a peak in 1951.

Governance[link]

The Metropolis[link]

By the 19th century, the East End of London had expanded to the eastern boundary with Essex, and the Tower division had reached a population of over a million.^[1] Following the coming of the railways, the north western suburbs of London steadily spread over large parts of the county.^[7] The areas closest to London were served by the Metropolitan Police from 1829 and, from 1840, the entire county was included in the Metropolitan Police District.^[20] Local government in the county was unaffected by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, and civic works continued to be the responsibility of the individual parish vestries or ad hoc improvement commissioners.^[21][22] In 1855, the parishes of the densely populated area in the south east, but excluding the City of London, came within the responsibility of the Metropolitan Board of Works.^[5] Despite this innovation, the system was described by commentators at the time as one "in chaos".^[6] In 1889, under the Local Government Act 1888, the metropolitan area of approximately 30,000 acres (120 km²) became part of the County of London.^[18] The Act also provided that the part of Middlesex in the administrative county of London should be "severed from [Middlesex], and form a separate county for all non-administrative purposes".

Map in 1882 shows complete urbanisation of the East End

The part of the County of London that had been transferred from Middlesex was divided in 1900 into 18 metropolitan boroughs, which were merged in 1965 to form seven of the present-day inner London boroughs:

• Camden was formed from the metropolitan boroughs of Hampstead, Holborn and St Pancras
• Hackney was formed from the metropolitan boroughs of Hackney, Shoreditch and Stoke Newington
• Hammersmith (known as Hammersmith and Fulham from 1979) was formed from the metropolitan boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham
• Islington was formed from the metropolitan boroughs of Finsbury and Islington
• Kensington and Chelsea was formed from the metropolitan boroughs of Chelsea and Kensington
• Tower Hamlets was formed from the metropolitan boroughs of Bethnal Green, Poplar and Stepney
• The City of Westminster was formed from the metropolitan boroughs of Paddington, St Marylebone and the City of Westminster.^[5]

Extra-metropolitan area[link]

Middlesex outside the metropolitan area remained largely rural until the middle of the 19th century, and so local government was slow to develop. Other than the Cities of London and Westminster, there were no ancient boroughs.^[23] The importance of the hundred courts declined, and such local administration as there was divided between "county business" conducted by the justices of the peace meeting in quarter sessions, and the local matters dealt with by parish vestries. As the suburbs of London spread into the area, unplanned development and outbreaks of cholera forced the creation of local boards or improvement commissioners to govern the growing towns. In rural areas, parishes began to be grouped for different administrative purposes. From 1875 these local bodies were designated as urban or rural sanitary districts.^[24]

Following the Local Government Act 1888, the remaining county came under the control of Middlesex County Council except for the parish of Monken Hadley, which became part of Hertfordshire.^[25] The area of responsibility of the Lord Lieutenant of Middlesex was reduced accordingly. Middlesex did not contain any county boroughs, so the county and administrative county (the area of county council control) were identical.

The Local Government Act 1894 divided the administrative county into four rural districts and thirty-one urban districts, based on existing sanitary districts. One urban district, South Hornsey, was an exclave of Middlesex within the County of London until 1900, when it was transferred to the latter county.^[26] The rural districts were Hendon, South Mimms, Staines and Uxbridge. Because of increasing urbanisation these had all been abolished by 1934.^[10] Urban districts had been created, merged, and many had gained the status of municipal borough by 1965. The districts as at the 1961 census were:^[9]

Potters Bar Enfield Southgate Edmonton Tottenham Wood Green Friern Barnet Hornsey Finchley Hendon Harrow Ruislip-Northwood Uxbridge

Ealing Wembley Willesden Acton Brentford and Chiswick Heston and Isleworth Southall Hayes and Harlington Yiewsley and West Drayton Staines Feltham Twickenham Sunbury-on-Thames

After 1889 the growth of London continued, and the county became almost entirely filled by suburbs of London, with a big rise in population density. This process was accelerated by the Metro-land developments, which covered a large part of the county.^[27] Public transport in the county, including the extensive network of trams,^[28] buses and the London Underground came under control of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933^[29] and a New Works Programme was developed to further enhance services during the 1930s.^[7] Partly because of its proximity to the capital, the county had a major role during the Second World War. The county was subject to aerial bombardment and contained various military establishments, such as RAF Uxbridge and RAF Heston, which were involved in the Battle of Britain.^[30]

County town[link]

The Middlesex Guildhall at Westminster

Middlesex does not have a single established historic county town, because of the proximity and the dominance of London.^[19] However, different locations having been used for different county purposes. The County Assizes for Middlesex were held at the Old Bailey in the City of London.^[4] Until 1889 the High Sheriff of Middlesex was chosen by the City of London Corporation. The sessions house for the Middlesex Quarter Sessions was at Clerkenwell Green from the early eighteenth century. The quarter sessions at the former Middlesex Sessions House performed most of the administration of the county until the creation of the Middlesex County Council in 1889. New Brentford was first described as the county town in 1789, on the basis that it was the location of elections of knights for the shire (or Members of Parliament) from 1701.^[18][31] In 1795, New Brentford was "considered as the county-town; but there is no town-hall or other public building".^[32] Middlesex County Council, which took over the administrative duties of the Quarter Sessions in 1889, was based at the Middlesex Guildhall, in Westminster. This was in the County of London, and thus outside the council's area of jurisdiction.

Arms of Middlesex County Council[link]

Coat of arms of Middlesex County Council

Coats of arms were attributed by the medieval heralds to the Kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. That assigned to the Kingdom of the Middle and East Saxons depicted three "seaxes" or short notched swords on a red background. The seaxe was a weapon carried by Anglo-Saxon warriors, and the term "Saxon" may be derived from the word.^[33][34] These arms became associated with the two counties that approximated to the kingdom: Middlesex and Essex. County authorities, militia and volunteer regiments associated with both counties used the attributed arms.

In 1910 it was noted that the county councils of Essex and Middlesex and the Sheriff's Office of the County of London were all using the same arms. Middlesex County Council decided to apply for a formal grant of arms from the College of Arms, with the addition of an heraldic "difference" to the attributed arms. Colonel Otley Parry, a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex and author of a book on military badges, was asked to devise an addition to the shield. The chosen addition was a "Saxon Crown", derived from the portrait of King Athelstan on a silver penny of his reign, stated to be the earliest form of crown associated with any English sovereign. The grant of arms was made by letters patent dated 7 November 1910.^[35][36][37] The blazon of the arms was:

Gules, three seaxes fessewise points to the sinister proper, pomels and hilts and in the centre chief point a Saxon crown or.

The undifferenced arms of the Kingdom were eventually granted to Essex County Council in 1932.^[38] Seaxes were also used in the insignia of many of the boroughs and urban districts in the county, while the Saxon crown came to be a common heraldic charge in English civic arms.^[39][40] On the creation of the Greater London Council in 1965 a Saxon crown was introduced in its coat of arms.^[41] Seaxes appear in the arms of several London borough councils and of Spelthorne Borough Council, whose area was in Middlesex.^[42][43]

Creation of Greater London[link]

The population of the County of London had been in decline since its creation in 1889, and following the Second World War, the exodus continued.^[8] In contrast, the population of Middlesex had seen a steady increase during that period.^[44] From 1951 to 1961 the population of the inner districts of the county started to drop and growth was experienced only in eight of the suburban outer districts.^[9] According to the 1961 census, Ealing, Enfield, Harrow, Hendon, Heston and Isleworth, Tottenham, Wembley, Willesden and Twickenham had all reached a population of greater than 100,000, which would normally have entitled them to seek county borough status. If granted to all these boroughs, this would have reduced the population of the administrative county of Middlesex by over half, to just shy of a million.

Following the Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London, Parliament enacted the London Government Act 1963, which came into force on 1 April 1965.

The Act abolished the administrative counties of Middlesex and London.^[45] The Administration of Justice Act 1964 abolished the Middlesex magistracy and lieutenancy. In April 1965, nearly all of Middlesex came under the control of the Greater London Council as part of Greater London and formed the new outer London boroughs of Barnet (part only), Brent, Ealing, Enfield, Haringey, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Richmond upon Thames (part only).^[46] The remaining areas were Potters Bar Urban District, which became part of Hertfordshire, while Sunbury-on-Thames Urban District and Staines Urban District became part of Surrey.^[10] Following the changes, local acts of Parliament relating to Middlesex were henceforth to apply to the entirety of the nine "North West London Boroughs".^[47] In 1974, the three urban districts that had been transferred to Hertfordshire and Surrey were abolished and became the districts of Hertsmere (part only) and Spelthorne respectively.^[48] In 1995 the village of Poyle was transferred from Spelthorne to the Berkshire borough of Slough.^[49] Additionally, since 1965 the Greater London boundary to the west and north has been subject to a significant number of small changes.^[50][51]

Geography[link]

The county lies within the London Basin^[52] and the most significant feature was the River Thames, which formed the southern boundary. The River Lea and the River Colne formed natural boundaries to the east and west. In the south west of the county the Thames meandered enough to make "Middlesex bank" more descriptively accurate than "north bank"; a distinction used during the The Boat Race. In the north the boundary was mostly formed by a ridge of hills broken by Barnet valley and a long protrusion of Hertfordshire into the county.^[53] The county was thickly wooded,^[52] with much of it covered by the ancient Forest of Middlesex. The highest point was the High Road by Bushey Heath at 502 feet (153 m),^[54] which is now one of the highest points in London.^[55]

Legacy[link]

Middlesex is used in the names of organisations based in the area such as Middlesex County Cricket Club,^[56] the Middlesex Cricket Board and Middlesex University.^[57] There is a Middlesex County Football Association and two teams that are now within Surrey, Staines Town and Ashford Town (Middlesex) as well as Potters Bar Town in Hertfordshire,^[58] compete in the Middlesex County Cup.^[59] Sir John Betjeman, a native of North London and Poet Laureate, published several poems about Middlesex and the suburban experience. Many were featured in the televised readings Metroland.^[60] As part of a 2002 marketing campaign, the plant conservation charity Plantlife chose the wood anemone as the county flower. In 2003, an early day motion with two signatures noted that 16 May is the anniversary of the Battle of Albuera and in recent years has been celebrated as Middlesex Day, commemorating the valiant efforts of the Middlesex Regiment (the "Die-hards") in that battle. The idea is to recognise and celebrate the historic county.^[61] On its creation in 1965, Greater London was divided into five commission areas for the administration of justice. One was named "Middlesex" and consisted of the boroughs of Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Enfield, Haringey, Harrow, Hillingdon and Hounslow.^[62] This was abolished on 1 July 2003.^[63]

Former postal county[link]

Middlesex (abbreviated Middx)^[64][65] is also defined as a former postal county; an element of postal addressing in routine use until 1996 and now an optional component.^[11] The postal county was retained after 1965 because Royal Mail was unable to follow all the changes to county boundaries and could not adopt Greater London as a postal county.^[66] However, much of inner Middlesex (Willesden, Hornsey etc.)^[67] was within the London postal district, within which addresses already included "LONDON" and did not include a county. The transfer of Potters Bar to Hertfordshire was adopted by the Royal Mail, but the transfers of Staines and Sunbury to Surrey were not. The remaining postal county consisted of two unconnected areas, 6 miles (9.7 km) apart (Enfield and the rest)^[64] and comprised the following post towns:

Postcode area	Post towns
EN (part)	ENFIELD
HA	EDGWARE • HARROW • NORTHWOOD • PINNER • RUISLIP • STANMORE • WEMBLEY
TW (part)	ASHFORD • BRENTFORD • FELTHAM • HAMPTON • HOUNSLOW† • ISLEWORTH • SHEPPERTON • STAINES • SUNBURY-ON-THAMES • TEDDINGTON • TWICKENHAM†
UB	GREENFORD • HAYES • NORTHOLT • SOUTHALL • UXBRIDGE • WEST DRAYTON

† = postal county was not required

The postal county included many anomalies where the post towns it consisted of encroached on neighbouring counties, such as the village of Denham, Buckinghamshire, which is included in the post town of Uxbridge and was therefore within the postal county of Middlesex; conversely, Hampton Wick was not included in the Middlesex postal county as it was served by post towns associated with Surrey.^[68] This gives Hampton Court Palace a postal address suggesting it is located in East Molesey, Surrey.^[69] Wraysbury, Berkshire and Egham Hythe, Surrey are with the Staines post town and thus were also included in the Middlesex postal county.

See also[link]

• List of Lord Lieutenants of Middlesex
• Custos Rotulorum of Middlesex - List of Keepers of the Rolls
• List of High Sheriffs of Middlesex
• Middlesex (UK Parliament constituency) - Historical list of MPs for the Middlesex constituency
• River Thames

References[link]

Footnotes

Bibliography

External links[link]

• Victoria County History of Middlesex
• Historic boundary as layer for Google Earth
• Maps of Middlesex subdivisions: Edmonton, Elthorne, Gore, Isleworth and Spelthorne
  • Ossulstone: Outer Finsbury, Inner Finsbury, Outer Kensington, Inner Kensington, Holborn and Tower
• Middlesex and West London Photo Galleries

Neighbouring counties (1889-1965)

	Buckinghamshire	Hertfordshire	Herts/Essex
	Berkshire		Essex
		Middlesex    East
	Surrey	Surrey	London

v t e Local government districts abolished or transferred by the London Government Act 1963 London · CC Battersea · Bermondsey · Bethnal Green · Camberwell · Chelsea · Deptford · Finsbury · Fulham · Greenwich · Hackney · Hammersmith · Hampstead · Holborn · Islington · Kensington · Lambeth · Lewisham · Paddington · Poplar · Shoreditch · Southwark · St. Marylebone · St. Pancras · Stepney · Stoke Newington · Wandsworth · Westminster · Woolwich Constituent parts of Greater London Essex Barking · Chigwell (part) · Chingford · Dagenham · East Ham · Hornchurch · Ilford · Leyton · Romford · Walthamstow · Wanstead and Woodford · West Ham Hertfordshire Barnet · East Barnet Middlesex · CC Acton · Brentford and Chiswick · Ealing · Edmonton · Enfield · Feltham · Finchley · Friern Barnet · Harrow · Hayes and Harlington · Hendon · Heston and Isleworth · Hornsey · Ruislip-Northwood · Southall · Southgate · Tottenham · Twickenham · Uxbridge · Wembley · Willesden · Wood Green · Yiewsley and West Drayton Kent Beckenham · Bexley · Bromley · Chislehurst and Sidcup · Crayford · Erith · Orpington · Penge Surrey Barnes · Beddington and Wallington · Carshalton · Coulsdon and Purley · Croydon · Kingston-upon-Thames · Malden and Coombe · Merton and Morden · Mitcham · Sutton and Cheam · Surbiton · Richmond · Wimbledon Transfers Middlesex to Hertfordshire: Potters Bar · Middlesex to Surrey: Staines · Sunbury-on-Thames

Coordinates: 51°30′N 0°25′W / 51.5°N 0.417°W / 51.5; -0.417

Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Eugenides at the Miami Book Fair International 2011
Born	(1960-03-08) March 8, 1960 (age 52) Detroit, Michigan, United States
Occupation	Novelist Short story writer Professor
Nationality	American
Genres	Fiction
Children	1 daughter
Influences John Hawkes, Philip Roth, Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, George Eliot, Henry James, Virgil, Euripedes, John Cheever, Thomas Pynchon

Jeffrey Kent Eugenides (born March 8, 1960) is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer. Eugenides is most known for his first two novels, The Virgin Suicides (1993) and Middlesex (2002). His novel The Marriage Plot was published in October, 2011.

Life and career[link]

Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan, of Greek and Irish descent. He attended Grosse Pointe's private University Liggett School. He took his undergraduate degree at Brown University, graduating in 1983. He later earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University.

In 1986 he received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship for his story "Here Comes Winston, Full of the Holy Spirit." His 1993 novel, The Virgin Suicides, gained mainstream interest with the 1999 film adaptation directed by Sofia Coppola. The novel was reissued in 2009.

Eugenides is reluctant to disclose details about his private life, except through Michigan-area book signings in which he details the influence of Detroit and his high-school experiences on his writings. He has said that he has "a perverse love" of his birthplace. "I think most of the major elements of American history are exemplified in Detroit, from the triumph of the automobile and the assembly line to the blight of racism, not to mention the music, Motown, the MC5, house, techno."^[1] He also says he has been haunted by the decline of Detroit.^[2]

He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife, Karen Yamauchi, and their daughter, Georgia. In the fall of 2007, Eugenides joined the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.^[3]

His 2002 novel, Middlesex, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Ambassador Book Award. Part of it was set in Berlin, Germany, where Eugenides lived from 1999 to 2004, but it was chiefly concerned with the Greek-American immigrant experience in the United States, against the rise and fall of Detroit. It explores the experience of the intersexed in the USA.^[4] Eugenides wrote a lecture titled "On Obstacles and Omens: The Writing of 'Middlesex'", in which he discussed the numerous omens he experienced while working on Middlesex.^[5] In one omen, Eugenides based Cal's grandparents on his own grandparents, whom he recalled through an ancient, furled snapshot he had seen many years prior. As he finished a character sketch of Cal's grandparents one day, Eugenides received from the post office a parcel from his mother. It contained the photograph of his grandparents, now unfurled and framed, that Eugenides had been recalling.^[5] In another omen, Eugenides wrote about the adolescent Calliope's intimate relations with a girl she names the Obscure Object. The name was derived from the nickname of a captivating woman he had met in university. The same day he completed the novel, he attended a dinner hosted at the American Academy in Berlin, where he conversed with a faintly recognizable woman. After talking with her briefly, he suddenly recognized that she was the Obscure Object whom he had not seen for two decades.^[3]

Eugenides has also published short stories, primarily in The New Yorker. His 1996 story "Baster" became the basis for the 2010 romantic comedy The Switch.

Eugenides is the editor of the collection of short stories titled My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead. The proceeds of the collection go to the writing center 826 Chicago, established to encourage young people's writing.

His third novel, The Marriage Plot (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 2011 ), has been called by Carlin Romano in the Chronicle of Higher Education "the most entertaining campus novel since Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons". ^[6]

Eugenides announced at a 2011 Washington, DC reading for "The Marriage Plot" that his next project would be a book of short stories.

Novels[link]

• The Virgin Suicides (1993) (ISBN 0-446-67025-1)
• Middlesex (2002) (ISBN 0-374-19969-8) - Pulitzer Prize for fiction
• The Marriage Plot (2011)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jeffrey Eugenides

• Jeffrey Eugenides, Princeton University Creative Writing Program
• Articles by Jeffrey Eugenides on the 5th Estate blog
• "Great Experiment", The New Yorker, 31 March 2008
• Read "Extreme Solitude" story in New Yorker
• Jeffrey Eugenides at the Internet Movie Database

Interviews[link]

• Video of Eugenides with Salman Rushdie, "LIVE", New York Public Library,^{[dead link]} June 27, 2008
• Video of Eugenides with Daniel Kehlmann,^{[dead link]} PEN World Voices, May 4, 2008
• Fresh Air, "Interview with Terry Gross", WHYY, aired on 2002-09-24
• "Interview", 3am Magazine, 2003
• Salon.com interview
• "Interview", Guardian Unlimited Books

Sir John Betjeman
Statue of John Betjeman at St Pancras station.
Born	(1906-08-28)28 August 1906 Parliament Hill Mansions, Lissenden Gardens, Hampstead, London, England, United Kingdom
Died	19 May 1984(1984-05-19) (aged 77) Trebetherick, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom
Occupation	Poet, writer, broadcaster
Spouse(s)	Hon. Penelope Chetwode (m. 1933–1951)
Partner(s)	Lady Elizabeth Cavendish (1951–1984)
Children	Paul Betjeman Candida Lycett Green

Sir John Betjeman, CBE ( /ˈbɛtʃəmən/; 28 August 1906 – 19 May 1984) was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".

He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture. Starting his career as a journalist, he ended it as one of the most popular British Poets Laureate to date and a much-loved figure on British television.

Life[link]

Early life and education[link]

Betjeman was born "John Betjemann"; this was changed to the less German "Betjeman" during the First World War. His parents, Mabel (née Dawson) and Ernest Betjemann had a family firm which manufactured the kind of ornamental household furniture and gadgets distinctive to Victorians. His father's forebears had come from the Netherlands,^[1] more than a century earlier, setting up their home and business in Islington, London. Betjeman was baptised at St. Anne's Church Highgate Rise, a 19th Century church situated just at the foot of Highgate West Hill. The family lived at Parliament Hill Mansions in the Lissenden Gardens private estate in Highgate in North London.

In 1909, the Betjemanns moved half a mile north to more opulent Highgate. From West Hill they lived in the reflected glory of the Burdett-Coutts estate:

"Here from my eyrie, as the sun went down,

I heard the old North London puff and shunt,

Glad that I did not live in Gospel Oak."^[2]

Betjeman's early schooling was at the local Byron House and Highgate School, where he was taught by the poet T. S. Eliot. After this, he boarded at the Dragon School preparatory school in North Oxford and Marlborough College, a public school in Wiltshire. In his penultimate year, he joined the secret 'Society of Amici'^[3] in which he was a contemporary of both Louis MacNeice and Graham Shepard. While at school, his exposure to the works of Arthur Machen won him over to High Church Anglicanism, a conversion of importance to his later writing and conception of the arts.^[4]

Magdalen College, Oxford[link]

Betjeman entered the University of Oxford with considerable difficulty, having failed the mathematics portion of the university's matriculation exam, Responsions. He was, however, admitted as a commoner (i.e., a non-scholarship student) at Magdalen College and entered the newly created School of English Language and Literature. At Oxford, Betjeman made little use of the academic opportunities. His tutor, a young C. S. Lewis, regarded him as an "idle prig" and Betjeman in turn considered Lewis unfriendly, demanding, and uninspired as a teacher.^[5] Betjeman particularly disliked the coursework's emphasis on linguistics, and dedicated most of his time to cultivating his social life, his interest in English ecclesiastical architecture, and to private literary pursuits. During his time at Oxford he was a friend of Maurice Bowra, Dean of Wadham. He had a poem published in Isis, the university magazine and was editor of the Cherwell student newspaper during 1927. His first book of poems was privately printed with the help of fellow-student Edward James. He famously brought his teddy bear Archibald Ormsby-Gore up to Magdalen with him, the memory of which later inspired his Oxford contemporary Evelyn Waugh to include Sebastian Flyte's teddy Aloysius in Brideshead Revisited. Much of this period of his life is recorded in his blank verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells published in 1960 and made into a television film in 1976.^[6]

It is a common misapprehension, cultivated by Betjeman himself, that he did not complete his degree because he failed to pass the compulsory holy scripture examination, known as Divinity, or, colloquially, as "Divvers". In Hilary Term 1928, Betjeman failed Divinity for the second time. He had to leave the university (rustication) for the Trinity Term to prepare for a retake of the exam; he was then allowed to return in October. Betjeman then wrote to the Secretary of the Tutorial Board at Magdalen, G. C. Lee, asking to be entered for the Pass School, a set of examinations taken on rare occasions by undergraduates who are deemed unlikely to achieve an honours degree. In his verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells, Betjeman claims that his tutor, C. S. Lewis, said "You'd have only got a third". However, Lewis had informed the tutorial board that he thought Betjeman would not achieve an honours degree of any class.^[5]

Permission to sit the Pass School was granted. Betjeman famously decided to offer a paper in Welsh. Osbert Lancaster tells the story that a tutor came by train twice a week (first class) from Aberystwyth to teach Betjeman. However, Jesus College had a number of Welsh tutors who more probably would have taught him. Betjeman finally had to leave at the end of the Michaelmas Term, 1928.^[7] Betjeman did pass his Divinity examination on his third try but was 'sent down' after failing the Pass School. He had achieved a satisfactory result in only one of the three required papers (on Shakespeare and other English authors).^[5] Betjeman's academic failure at Oxford rankled him for the rest of his life and he was never reconciled with C.S. Lewis, towards whom he nursed a bitter detestation. This situation was perhaps complicated by his enduring love of Oxford, from which he accepted an honorary doctorate of letters in 1974.^[5]

After university[link]

The John Betjeman Centre Memorabilia Room showing the office from his home in Trebetherick

Betjeman left Oxford without a degree but he had made the acquaintance of people who would influence his work, including Louis MacNeice and W. H. Auden.^[8] After university, Betjeman worked briefly as a private secretary, school teacher and film critic for the Evening Standard. He was employed by the Architectural Review between 1930 and 1935, as a full time assistant editor, following their publishing of some of his freelance work. Mowl (2000) says, "His years at the Architectural Review were to be his true university".^[9] At this time, while his prose style matured, he joined the MARS Group, an organisation of young modernist architects and architectural critics in Britain.

On 29 July 1933 Betjeman married the Hon. Penelope Chetwode, the daughter of Field Marshal Lord Chetwode. The couple lived in Berkshire and had a son, Paul, in 1937. Their daughter, Candida Lycett Green was born in 1942.

The Shell Guides, were developed by Betjeman and Jack Beddington, a friend who was publicity manager with Shell-Mex Ltd. The series aimed to guide Britain's growing number of motorists around the counties of Britain and their historical sites. They were published by the Architectural Press and financed by Shell. By the start of World War II 13 had been published, of which Cornwall (1934) and Devon (1936) had been written by Betjeman. A third, Shropshire, was written with and designed by his good friend John Piper in 1951.

In 1939, Betjeman was rejected for active service in World War II but found war work with the films division of the Ministry of Information. In 1941 he became British press attaché in Dublin, Ireland, then a neutral country, working with Sir John Maffey. He may have been involved with the gathering of intelligence. He is reported to have been selected for assassination by the IRA. The order was rescinded after a meeting with an unnamed Old I.R.A. man who was impressed by his works. Betjeman wrote a number of poems based on his experiences in "Emergency" World War II Ireland including "The Irish Unionist's Farewell to Greta Hellstrom in 1922" (actually written during the war) which contained the refrain "Dungarvan in the rain". " Greta", the object of his affections, has remained a mystery until recently revealed to have been a member of a well known West Waterford Ascendancy family. His official brief included establishing friendly contacts with leading figures in the Dublin literary scene: he befriended Patrick Kavanagh, then at the very start of his career . Kavanagh celebrated the birth of Betjeman's daughter with a poem " Candida"; another well known poem contains the line Let John Betjeman call for me in a car.

After the Second World War[link]

Betjeman's house at Cloth Fair in the City

John's wife, Penelope Betjeman became a Roman Catholic in 1948. The couple drifted apart and in 1951 he met Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, with whom he developed an immediate and lifelong friendship.

By 1948 Betjeman had published more than a dozen books. Five of these were verse collections, including one in the USA. Sales of his Collected Poems in 1958 reached 100,000.^[10] The popularity of the book prompted Ken Russell to make a film about him, John Betjeman: A Poet in London (1959). Filmed in 35mm and running 11 minutes and 35 seconds, it was first shown in England on BBC's Monitor programme.^[11] He continued writing guidebooks and works on architecture during the 1960s and 1970s and started broadcasting. He was also a founder member of The Victorian Society (1958). Betjeman was also closely associated with the culture and spirit of Metro-land, as outer reaches of the Metropolitan Railway were known before the war. In 1973 he made a widely acclaimed television documentary for the BBC called Metro-land, directed by Edward Mirzoeff. On the centenary of Betjeman's birth in 2006, his daughter led two celebratory railway trips: one from London to Bristol, the other, through Metro-land, to Quainton Road. In 1975, he proposed that the Fine Rooms of Somerset House should house the Turner Bequest, so helping to scupper the plan of the Minister for the Arts for a Theatre Museum to be housed there.

Betjeman was fond of the ghost stories of M.R. James and supplied an introduction to Peter Haining's book M.R. James – Book of the Supernatural. He was susceptible to the supernatural. Diana Mitford tells the story of Betjeman staying at her country home, Biddesden House, in the 1920s. She says, "he had a terrifying dream, that he was handed a card with wide black edges, and on it his name was engraved, and a date. He knew this was the date of his death".^[12]

John Betjeman's grave

For the last decade of his life Betjeman suffered increasingly from Parkinson's Disease. He died at his home in Trebetherick, Cornwall on 19 May 1984, aged 77 and is buried half a mile away in the churchyard at St Enodoc's Church.^[13]

Poetry[link]

Betjeman's poems are often humorous and in broadcasting he exploited his bumbling and fogeyish image. His wryly comic verse is accessible and has attracted a great following for its satirical and observant grace. Auden said in his introduction to Slick But Not Streamlined, "so at home with the provincial gaslit towns, the seaside lodgings, the bicycle, the harmonium." His poetry is similarly redolent of time and place, continually seeking out intimations of the eternal in the manifestly ordinary. There are constant evocations of the physical chaff and clutter that accumulates in everyday life, the miscellanea of an England now gone but not beyond the reach of living memory. He talks of Ovaltine and the Sturmey-Archer bicycle gear. "Oh! Fuller's angel cake, Robertson's marmalade," he writes, "Liberty lampshades, come shine on us all."^[14] In a 1962 radio interview he told teenage questioners that he could not write about 'abstract things', preferring places, and faces.^[15] Philip Larkin wrote of his work, "how much more interesting & worth writing about Betjeman's subjects are than most other modern poets, I mean, whether so-and-so achieves some metaphysical inner unity is not really so interesting to us as the overbuilding of rural Middlesex".^[16]

Betjeman was a practising Anglican and his religious beliefs come through in some of his poems. He combined piety with a nagging uncertainty about the truth of Christianity. Unlike Thomas Hardy, who disbelieved in the truth of the Christmas story, while hoping it might be so, Betjeman affirms his belief even while fearing it might be false.^[4] In the poem "Christmas", one of his most openly religious pieces, the last three stanzas that proclaim the wonder of Christ's birth do so in the form of a question "And is it true...?" His views on Christianity were expressed in his poem "The Conversion of St. Paul", a response to a radio broadcast by humanist Margaret Knight: <poem>

But most of us turn slow to see

The figure hanging on a tree

And stumble on and blindly grope

Upheld by intermittent hope,

God grant before we die we all

May see the light as did St. Paul.

</poem>

Betjeman became Poet Laureate in 1972, the first Knight Bachelor ever to be appointed (the only other, Sir William Davenant, had been knighted after his appointment). This role, combined with his popularity as a television performer, ensured that his poetry eventually reached an audience enormous by the standards of the time. Similarly to Tennyson, he appealed to a wide public and managed to voice the thoughts and aspirations of many ordinary people while retaining the respect of many of his fellow poets. This is partly because of the apparently simple traditional metrical structures and rhymes he uses.^[17] In the early 1970s, he began a recording career of four albums on Charisma Records which included "Banana Blush" (1973) and "Late Flowering Love" (1974), where his poetry reading is set to music with overdubbing by leading musicians of the time.^[18]

Betjeman and architecture[link]

Betjeman Statue in St Pancras.

Betjeman had a fondness for Victorian architecture and was a founding member of Victorian Society. He wrote London's Historic Railway Stations in 1972, defending the beauty of the twelve of London's railway stations. He led the campaign to save Holy Trinity, Sloane Street in London when it was threatened with demolition in the early 1970s.^[19] He fought a spirited but ultimately unsuccessful campaign to save the Propylaeum, known commonly as the Euston Arch, London. He is considered instrumental in helping to save the famous façade of St Pancras railway station, London and was commemorated when it re-opened as an international and domestic terminus in November 2007. He called the plan to demolish St Pancras a "criminal folly".^[20] About the station itself he wrote, "What [the Londoner] sees in his mind's eye is that cluster of towers and pinnacles seen from Pentonville Hill and outlined against a foggy sunset, and the great arc of Barlow's train shed gaping to devour incoming engines, and the sudden burst of exuberant Gothic of the hotel seen from gloomy Judd Street." On the re-opening St Pancras in 2007, a statue of Betjeman by Martin Jennings was erected in the station at platform level.^[20]

Betjeman responded to architecture as the visible manifestation of society's spiritual life as well as its political and economic structure. He attacked speculators and bureaucrats for what he saw as their rapacity and lack of imagination. In the preface of his collection of architectural essays, First and Last Loves says: "We accept the collapse of the fabrics of our old churches, the thieving of lead and objects from them, the commandeering and butchery of our scenery by the services, the despoiling of landscaped parks and the abandonment to a fate worse than the workhouse of our country houses, because we are convinced we must save money." In a BBC film made in 1968 but not broadcast at that time, Betjeman described the sound of Leeds to be of "Victorian buildings crashing to the ground". He went on to lambaste John Poulson's building, British Railways House (now City House) saying how it blocked all the light out to City Square and was only a testament to money with no architectural merit. He also praised the architecture of Leeds Town Hall.^[21][22] In 1969 Betjeman contributed the foreword to Derek Linstrum's Historic Architecture of Leeds.^[23]

Legacy[link]

• A memorial window, designed by John Piper, is set in All Saints' Church, Farnborough, Berkshire, where Betjeman lived in the adjoining Rectory.
• The Betjeman Millennium Park at Wantage in Oxfordshire (formerly in Berkshire), was where he lived from 1951 to 1972 and where he set his book, Archie and the Strict Baptists
• The John Betjeman Young People's Poetry Competition was inaugurated in 2006 to celebrate Betjeman's centenary. The competition is open to 11–14 year olds living anywhere in the British Isles and the Republic of Ireland. The spirit behind the competition is to encourage young people to understand and appreciate the importance of place.^[24]
• One of the two engines used on the pier railway at Southend-on-Sea is named Sir John Betjeman (the other being Sir William Heygate).
• In 2003, to mark their Centenary, the residents of Lissenden Gardens in London put up a plaque to mark Betjeman's birth place.
• The statue of John Betjeman at St Pancras station by sculptor Martin Jennings was unveiled in 2007.

Honours[link]

• 1960 Queen's Medal for Poetry
• 1960 CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire)
• 1968 Companion of Literature, the Royal Society of Literature
• 1969 Knight Bachelor
• 1972 Poet Laureate
• 1973 Honorary Member, the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Poetry Collections[link]

• Mount Zion (1932)
• Continual Dew (1937)
• Old Lights For New Chancels (1940)
• New Bats In Old Belfries (1945)
• A Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954)
• Poems In The Porch (1954)
• Summoned By Bells (1960)
• High and Low (1966)
• A Nip In The Air (1974)

Bibliography[link]

• Matthew, H.C.G. and Harrison, B. (eds), (2004). Oxford dictionary of national biography (vol. 5). Oxford: OUP.
• Brooke, Jocelyn (1962). Ronald Firbank and John Betjeman. London: Longmans, Green & Co.
• Games, Stephen (2006). Trains and Buttered Toast, Introduction. London: John Murray.
• Games, Stephen (2007). Tennis Whites and Teacakes, Introduction. London: John Murray.
• Games, Stephen (2007). Sweet Songs of Zion, Introduction. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
• Games, Stephen (2009). Betjeman's England, Introduction. London: John Murray.
• Gardner, Kevin J. (2005). "John Betjeman." The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Gardner, Kevin J. (2011) Betjeman on Faith: An anthology of his religious prose. London: SPCK.
• Gardner, Kevin J. (2010) Betjeman and the Anglican Tradition, London, SPCK.
• Green, Chris (2006). John Betjeman and the Railways. Transport for London
• Hillier, Bevis (1984). John Betjeman: a life in pictures. London: John Murray.
• Hillier, Bevis (1988). Young Betjeman. London: John Murray. ISBN 0-7195-4531-5.
• Hillier, Bevis (2002). John Betjeman: new fame, new love. London: John Murray. ISBN 0-7195-5002-5.
• Hillier, Bevis (2004). Betjeman: the bonus of laughter. London : John Murray. ISBN 0-7195-6495-6.
• Hillier, Bevis (2006). Betjeman: the biography. London: John Murray. ISBN 0-7195-6443-3
• Lycett Green, Candida (Ed.) (Methuen, 1994). Letters: John Betjeman, Vol.1, 1926 to 1951. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-77595-X
• Lycett Green, Candida (Ed.) (Methuen, 1995). Letters: John Betjeman, Vol.2, 1951 to 1984. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-77596-8
• Lycett Green, Candida, Betjeman's stations in The Oldie, September 2006
• Mirzoeff, Edward (2006). Viewing notes for Metro-land (DVD) (24pp)
• Mowl, Timothy (2000). Stylistic Cold Wars, Betjeman versus Pevsner. London: John Murray. ISBN 0-7195-5909-X
• Schroeder, Reinhard (1972). Die Lyrik John Betjemans. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. (Thesis).
• Sieveking, Lancelot de Giberne (1963). John Betjeman and Dorset. Dorchester: Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society.
• Stanford, Derek (1961). John Betjeman, a study. London: Neville Spearman.
• Taylor-Martin, Patrick (1983). John Betjeman, his life and work. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-1539-0
• Wilson, A. N. (2006). Betjeman. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-179702-0

References[link]