Praise for Mrs Betjeman
“This novel is as near to the truth, concerning the lifestyle of the much-travelled wife of The Poet Laureate.”
“This is a novel about an extraordinary woman, viewed, if at all, as the neglected wife of a great man: John Betjeman, poet, protector of Victorian Gothic, all round national treasure. “Mary Alexander could have written a warts-and-all attack on the man and the marriage. Instead she’s given us a fascinating portrait of Penelope Betjeman, a woman whose life moved from the Commander-in-Chief’s mansion in Delhi to a farmhouse free of electricity and hot water in an Oxfordshire village. But three things never changed: her unwavering love for an impossible husband, her search for faith and, more important than all these – as John Betjeman remarked – her passion for horses.
Penelope’s white Arab horse Moti, who travelled with her from Delhi, was entertained in Lord Berners’ drawing room. The photographs are famous. While John spent his weeks at smart parties in London, Penelope was saved from isolation by the eccentric Berners, and the waspish Evelyn Waugh.
The novel never circumvents history but, where history is silent, Mary Alexander gives us a convincing portrait of an unconventional aristocrat who eloped with a seedy journalist, and stayed loyal to him through the long years of his open relationship with Lady Elizabeth Cavendish.
The novel’s epilogue is a poem by John Betjeman, not published until after he and Penelope were both dead. It is a passionate poem about his loss of Penelope to the Catholic faith. It is a poem that seamlessly ends the picture of a marriage which Mary Alexander has painted.”
“This is a novel about an extraordinary woman, viewed, if at all, as the neglected wife of a great man: John Betjeman, poet, protector of Victorian Gothic, all round national treasure. “Mary Alexander could have written a warts-and-all attack on the man and the marriage. Instead she’s given us a fascinating portrait of Penelope Betjeman, a woman whose life moved from the Commander-in-Chief’s mansion in Delhi to a farmhouse free of electricity and hot water in an Oxfordshire village. But three things never changed: her unwavering love for an impossible husband, her search for faith and, more important than all these – as John Betjeman remarked – her passion for horses.
Penelope’s white Arab horse Moti, who travelled with her from Delhi, was entertained in Lord Berners’ drawing room. The photographs are famous. While John spent his weeks at smart parties in London, Penelope was saved from isolation by the eccentric Berners, and the waspish Evelyn Waugh.
The novel never circumvents history but, where history is silent, Mary Alexander gives us a convincing portrait of an unconventional aristocrat who eloped with a seedy journalist, and stayed loyal to him through the long years of his open relationship with Lady Elizabeth Cavendish.
The novel’s epilogue is a poem by John Betjeman, not published until after he and Penelope were both dead. It is a passionate poem about his loss of Penelope to the Catholic faith. It is a poem that seamlessly ends the picture of a marriage which Mary Alexander has painted.”