"The Poetry Archive entry for John Betjeman, with recordings of him reciting "A Subaltern's Love Song" and "Youth and Age on Beaulieu River"

“The test of an abstract picture, for me, is not my first reaction to it, but how long I can stand it hanging on the wall of a room where I am living.”

“Hymns are the poetry of the people.”

“Topography is one of my chief themes in my poetry...about the country, the suburbs and the seaside...then there comes love...and increasingly, the fear of death.”

“Yes, I haven't had enough sex.”

“Hymn tunes are the nearest we've got to English folk music.”

“Saint Pancras was a fourteen-year old Christian boy who was martyred in Rome in AD 304 by the Emperor Diocletian. In England he is better known as a railway station.”