Wanderings in West Africa: From Liverpool to Fernando Po: Volume 1 Book

A few reasons I wanted to read this book, and why I enjoyed it:

The England that Betjeman tried to preserve (architecture, Anglo-Catholicism, etc) is the England that I fell in love with as a kid (through reading and listening to things like Vaughan Williams' "Oxford Elegy") and which as I grew up I realized doesn't exist any more, much to my sadness. So I sensed a kindred spirit in Betjeman.

As a huge Waugh fan, I was excited to read about the inspiration for the famous teddy-bear toting Oxford student from Brideshead Revisited
.

And in a modern poetry course in grad school, the professor used a Betjeman poem as an illustration of what was wrong with poetry before modern poetry "rescued" it, in his opinion. So of course I became a Betjeman fan on the spot.

This was a very well-written biography that gave me a good sense of the man and his work. I'm looking forward to rereading some of his poetry now and perhaps digging up some of the BBC programs he did.