Betjeman's Cornwall.
BETJEMAN, (John).
Line drawings by John Piper and photographs by Edwin Smith, John Gay and others. First edition. Square 8vo., a fine copy in original illustrated wrappers. London, John Murray. 1984
Betjeman's early reminiscences of Cornwall are touching: "When I first came to Cornwall over fifty years ago, as a small boy, we drove the seven miles from the station in a horse-brake; there was only one motor-car in the parish and this could not attempt the steeper hills. Roads were only partially metalled and in the lesser lanes the rock showed through on the surface. Everyone in the village had oil lamps and candles. A journey to the nearest town and back was a day's expedition. There were still many country people who had never been to London and the story used to be told of one of them who thought the metropolis was all under a glass roof because he never got further than Paddington Station. Visitors to Cornwall, 'foreigners' as they are rightly called by the Cornish, were mostly fishermen, golfers and artists. My own father, in his leisure from business in London, was all three".
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