Google Earth Community: Bronze of Sir John Betjeman

Here is a bronze statue of a great poet!! Placed here in rememberance of his fight to save St Pancras from demolision.
John Beteman was born on August 28th, 1906, near Highgate, London. His father was Ernest Betjeman, a cabinet maker, a trade which had been in the family for several generations. The family name was Betjeman, with two 'n's, but John dropped the second 'n' during the First World War, to make the name less German. John was an only child, and by all accounts had a lonely childhood, taking comfort from his teddy bear, Archibald, later to feature in his children's story, Archie and the Strict Baptists.

Having attended his first schools in Highgate, John became a boarder at Dragon School, Oxford, aged eleven. Three years later, he went to Marlborough College, again as a boarder. Throughout John's childhood, his family went for holidays to Trebetherick in Cornwall, where his father owned a number of properties. These seemed to have been the happiest times for JB, and are remembered in many of his poems. In 1925, JB went to Magdalen College, Oxford. However, the many distractions of college life meant that he did not complete his degree, having failed a Divinity exam. He became a teacher at Thorpe House School, Gerrard's Cross, before working as a private secretary, and then at another prep school. In 1930, JB became an assistant editor of The Architectural Review. In 1931, his first book of poems, Mount Zion, was published by an old Oxford friend, Edward James. Soon afterwards, JB met and married Penelope Chetwode, the daughter of Field Marshal Lord Chetwode, a former Commander-in-Chief in India. It was clear that he did not approve of JB. His second book was Ghastly Good Taste, a commentary on architecture, published in 1934.