 |
PERETTI PUBLISHING
PO Box 18 Ottery St Mary Devon EX11 1YH Tel: 0870 900 98 98 |
|
Written by Betjeman in 1962 as the script for his film about the town, it had been shown once and then forgotten for almost 40 years, before being found in a rusting tin of cine-film.
"Our brief was to create portraits of places which were close to Betjeman's heart," Jonathan Stedall recalls in his Introduction to the book, "and Sidmouth was, I believe, the first place we visited together." Why Betjeman chose the town for the first of his twelve locations or why he decided to immortalise it in poetry, no one is sure. Betjeman wrote two other television scripts as poetry, one on Marlborough, his old school, which he loathed, the other on Brunel, whom he greatly admired. But neither subject allowed the poet the lightness of touch he employed in this masterful sketch of what now stands revealed perhaps as his favourite seaside town.
He worked closely with Stedall during the planning of the film and spent three days at a seafront hotel, discussing what might be included. But as with all their work together, Betjeman waited until he was invited to the cutting room before writing his script to picture. Then he wrote "Still Sidmouth" in rhyme, in a single sitting, astounding everybody. "One of Betjeman's outstanding qualities was his kindness and I think this shows in the script," Stedall says. "A lot of his observations are very personal. He imagines, for example, what people might be saying to one another or what they might be thinking. But he is never cruel. Fundamentally he loved life and people." As Stedall's discreet camera follows two women, strolling to the town's narrow shopping streets, Betjeman pictures their conversation:
Betjeman certainly knew the town well and was undoubtedly attracted by its architecture. But Sidmouth has many charms, not least which is its location. In the 1790s, "sunny Sidmouth", the little borough flanked by towering red cliffs at the mouth of the river Sid, drew the historian, Polwhele, to write in praise of "the salubrity of the air, the fine dry soil, and a situation the most delicious, open to the south-sea yet not subject to fogs, and screened from all but the southern winds." Little wonder that by the end of the century Sidmouth had become a fashionable resort. Sidmouth is little changed since the film was made - except (as elsewhere) for traffic, which Betjeman hated. Admittedly the butchers with its polished brass shop front became a bistro and the old-fashioned oil shop went on to sell reproduction furniture - but Sidmouth is still Sidmouth and the fabric of the place remains much as Betjeman saw it.
Betjeman's genius for words and their effortless delivery perfectly complemented Stedall's style of film making. During 22 years they produced many memorable programmes together, including, famously, Summoned by Bells, and Thank God it's Sunday. Shortly before the poet laureate's final illness and his consequent retreat from public life, Stedall stepped unobtrusively in front of the camera, to lead Betjeman back through many memories of his life to produce the autobiographical, Time with Betjeman . Sir John Betjeman was born in Highgate, London in 1906 and published more than 60 books of poetry and prose. He was awarded the CBE in 1960, made a Knight Bachelor in 1969 and became poet laureate in 1972, the most widely read since Tennyson and perhaps the best loved of them all. He died at Trebetherick, Cornwall in May, 1984 after a long illness, with Stedall one of the six pall bearers at the funeral. They carried Betjeman's coffin through driving rain across a mile of countryside to St. Enodoc's churchyard, where he is buried. "It was," Stedall recalls "as though the elements themselves were celebrating his extraordinary life." The 178-lines of classic Betjeman in "Still Sidmouth" provide a glimpse of his gentle and sometimes mischievous sense of fun which endeared him to millions of readers and viewers - as the last but one line of the poem reveals:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
