The first volume of John Betjeman's letters covers his life from university days through to his period on the staff of "The Architectural Review" and as editor of the "Shell Guides" in the 1930s, his time as press attache in Dublin during the war, and as a broadcaster and public speaker. It was a time which established him as both an enthusiast and an authority in a wide range of literary, artistic and architectural fields.
The letters written to people in the world of literature and the arts - T.S. Eliot, Cyril Connolly, Evelyn Waugh, John Piper, Kenneth Clark - often contain discourse on subjects ranging from poetry and religion to architecture and town planning. But many of them, as well as those written to family and cherished friends, including Alan Pryce-Jones, Myfanwy Piper and Nancy Mitford, are informal and often funny.
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