“I ought to warn you that my verse is of no interest to people who can think.”

— John Betjeman

Radio Talk. BBC Third Programme (1949)

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John Betjeman 30

English poet, writer and broadcaster 1906–1984

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“Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”

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“I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book.”

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Context: I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current or rather flying subjects; and they must be published pretty much as they stand. They were written, as a rule, at the last moment; they were handed in the moment before it was too late, and I do not think that our commonwealth would have been shaken to its foundations if they had been handed in the moment after. They must go out now, with all their imperfections on their head, or rather on mine; for their vices are too vital to be improved with a blue pencil, or with anything I can think of, except dynamite.
Their chief vice is that so many of them are very serious; because I had no time to make them flippant. It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous.