Betjeman and Larkin's 'frivolous spanners'

 Recently there's been an outbreak of Betjemania on BBC4, with a season of reruns of various of his TV features and interviews – and why not? John Betjeman was a natural on television, a medium that faithfully conveyed his particular charm, and that he seemed perfectly at home in. Most of his TV work is worth watching again and makes for enjoyable viewing, though some of the later stuff lapses into self-indulgence and self-caricature. A highlight of the season was Larkin and Betjeman: Down Cemetery Road, a Monitor film from 1964, in which the older poet visits Larkin in Hull and interviews him, or rather talks with him about poetry and life. Watching it, I couldn't help but wonder what was going through Larkin's head as he lounged in an armchair, smoking and responding to Betjeman's questions: there were moments, I think, when a flicker of awareness of the comedy of the situation could be glimpsed, but Larkin kept a straight face – indeed, when filmed stalking balefully about his place of work, a face of sepulchral straightness. It was said of Larkin and Betjeman that they formed a 'mutual admiration society', which is overstating it, but Betjeman clearly found much to admire in Larkin's poetry, and he was himself important to Larkin's development as a poet: reading Betjeman, with his immediacy, accessibility and well grounded particularity, surely helped Larkin to move on from his 'Yeats and water' phase and find his individual voice.
  In July 1973, the University of Hull, where Larkin had held the position of Librarian since 1955, awarded Betjeman an honorary D. Litt. At the ceremony Larkin read his ‘On John Betjeman: A Citation’, which opens with the words ‘[i]t is not easy to sum up in a few minutes the achievement of a man of such celebrated and individual quality as Sir John Betjeman, and the task is made no lighter by the frivolous spanners Sir John himself has from time to time seen fit to throw into the machinery of assessment’. Larkin could almost have been writing about himself there: he threw a few frivolous spanners in his lifetime, positively encouraging a view of himself as a curmudgeonly philistine – and then, after his death, with the publication of the letters and Andrew Motion's biography, a whole workshop of spanners were thrown into 'the machinery of assessment' as the more regrettable aspects of his character came under the spotlight. But does any of that matter? The climax of the Monitor programme was Larkin's reading (and enactment) of his great poem, 'Church Going'. That he could write a poem like that is all that matters in the end. Down Cemetery Road and other Betjeman films are still available to view on BBC iPlayer.