Sir John Betjeman

Betjeman: Child of the First War, Forgotten by the Second. We called you Metro-Land. We laid our schemes Lured by the lush brochure, down byways beckoned, To build at last the cottage of our dreams, A City clerk turned countryman again, And linked to the Metropolis by train.

Betjeman [sitting at table] : Is this Buckingham Palace? Are we at the Ritz? No. This is the Chiltern Court Restaurant, built above Baker Street station, the gateway between Metro-land out there and London down there. The creation of the Metropolitan Railway.

Betjeman: And here, screened by shrubs, Walled in from public view, Lived the kept women. What puritan arms have stretched within these rooms To touch what tender breasts, As the cab-horse stamped in the road outside. Sweet secret suburb on the City's rim, St John's Wood.

Betjeman [standing in centre of the pitch at Wembley] :
This was where London's failed Eiffel Tower stood. Watkins' Folly as it was called. Here on this Middlesex turf, and since then the site has become quite well-known.

Betjeman [standing in front of a house in Harrow] :
A verge in front of your house and grass and a tree for the dog. Variety created in the façades of each of the houses - in the colouring of the trees. In fact, the country had come to the suburbs. Roses are blooming in Metro-Land just as they do in the brochures.

Betjeman: Steam took us onwards, through the ripening fields, Ripe for development. Where the landscape yields Clay for warm brick, timber for post and rail Through Amersham to Aylesbury and the Vale. In those wet fields the railway didn't pay. The Metro stops at Amersham to-day.

Betjeman [standing and leaning on a bridge] :
Where are the advertisements? Where the shopping arcade, the coal merchant and the parked cars? This is a part of the Metropolitan Railway that's been entirely forgotten. Beyond Aylesbury it lies in flat fields with huge elms and distant blue hills.