A View From The Vicarage - October

Dear Friends

Betjeman’s Britain

Those of you who’ve attended some of our concerts during the summer months may well have heard me read the poem “The Diary of a Church Mouse, Christmas, The Church’s Restoration or Blame the Vicar” by the great late Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman.  As I’ve said on every occasion when I’ve been introducing Betjeman’s poetry quite how fond of it I am.  “For me, to listen to recordings of Betjeman speaking is to feel oneself enveloped in a large container of undulating gentle honey”.

The Britain which Betjaman describes with such gentle humour is it seems to me a place of which all of her children should be justifiably proud.  It’s a gentle, damp country full of pleasant but idiosyncratic people who’ve been shaped and moulded by the landscape and history which they’ve inherited.

It’s a Britain that perhaps can only truly be understood in sepia tones and it’s a Britain about as far removed from “Cool Britannia” or indeed the current political shenanigans as it’s possible to be.

Was Betjamin over romanticising Britain or have we in the years since his death squandered something unbelievably precious about the country and people we are?

I am one of those very fortunate people who can claim familial links to just about every part of the United Kingdom!  Indeed if I am asked to describe my nationality I prefer to answer British, after all I’m Anglo Welsh but one of my grandmothers and one of my great-grandfathers were Scottish so I can honestly claim allegiance to the three nations of Britain.  It’s also possible though by no means certain that I can also claim Irish forbears as the Griffith’s in Ireland are all descended from Welsh migrants indeed the founder of Sinn Fein was Arthur William Griffith, so you never know.

One of my Welsh forbears was a regicide, one of the signatories of Charles 1st’s death warrant, while one of my Scottish ones compiled what was for centuries the English language concordance of the Bible.  None of this makes me unique because I’m certain that you too can trace your lineage across the constituent nations of the United Kingdom and let’s be honest it is that strength in diversity which has made the United Kingdom the powerful force in international affairs which it has been. 

I hope and pray that despite the considerable strains and tremors our nation is currently experiencing the end of the Brexit process whatever and whenever that occurs will not lead to the dismemberment of the Country which we’ve all known and loved.  Our country is not perfect no human society, however utopian is or indeed ever will be that and we’re deluding ourselves if we think for a moment that a perfect society will ever survive on earth even the early Christian one of the Acts of the Apostles didn’t last!

But I still maintain that, in balance the contribution that these small islands off the cost of Europe have made to the rest of humanity has been positive and let’s pray and hope that that will continue to be true for many centuries to come.  If you’re in any doubt at all, just read John Betjeman’s poetry.

With my love and prayers as always

Ben