0:00:01 > 0:00:03BBC Four Collections -
0:00:03 > 0:00:06specially chosen programmes from the BBC archive.
0:00:15 > 0:00:21Most of my verse is about London and Cornwall.
0:00:21 > 0:00:25Here in the traffic roar of the city of London,
0:00:25 > 0:00:29I've written quite a lot of verses
0:00:29 > 0:00:34because this part is associated with my childhood.
0:00:34 > 0:00:39I can remember when, where we are now, was the Manchester Hotel.
0:00:39 > 0:00:44And where this bracken and rosebay grows, once,
0:00:44 > 0:00:48down in the passages which are tiled, you can still see the tiles,
0:00:48 > 0:00:52once people hurried along with trays of tea.
0:00:52 > 0:00:57And now, all that remains is this
0:00:57 > 0:01:00and the bombed ruins there,
0:01:00 > 0:01:03of Aldersgate Street station.
0:01:06 > 0:01:12Long after the amalgamation of all the independent railways...
0:01:14 > 0:01:18..Aldersgate Street station in the city of London remained
0:01:18 > 0:01:21a memorial of unwilling cooperation.
0:01:21 > 0:01:25On one side of the station, to this day,
0:01:25 > 0:01:30steam trains come in early in the morning from the suburbs
0:01:30 > 0:01:34and go out in the afternoon to the suburbs.
0:01:34 > 0:01:40And on the other side, electric trains are constantly and efficiently
0:01:40 > 0:01:43whirring to Hammersmith and round on the Inner Circle.
0:01:44 > 0:01:50And that huge station had, up at the top as you went out,
0:01:50 > 0:01:53a refreshment room, which I can remember before the war.
0:01:53 > 0:01:58It had plate-glass windows, and on the plate-glass windows
0:01:58 > 0:02:03in China letters were the words "Afternoon teas a speciality".
0:02:03 > 0:02:06A very nice place to have tea. And then...
0:02:07 > 0:02:09..last year, or maybe the year before,
0:02:09 > 0:02:13they took the enormous cast-iron roof off the station
0:02:13 > 0:02:16and that took away a lot of its personality
0:02:16 > 0:02:21and a lot of the feeling of the old city people who used to use it
0:02:21 > 0:02:24when people wore silk hats
0:02:24 > 0:02:29and travelled in a very respectable manner in non-smoking carriages.
0:02:31 > 0:02:36This is a monody on the death of Aldersgate Street station.
0:02:45 > 0:02:49Snow falls in the buffet of Aldersgate station
0:02:49 > 0:02:54Soot hangs in the tunnel in clouds of steam
0:02:54 > 0:02:55City of London
0:02:55 > 0:02:58Before the next desecration,
0:02:58 > 0:03:02let your steepled forest of churches be my theme.
0:03:03 > 0:03:07Sunday silence, with every street a dead street
0:03:07 > 0:03:11Alley and courtyard empty and cobbled mews
0:03:11 > 0:03:16Till "tingle tang", the bell of St Mildred's, Bread Street
0:03:16 > 0:03:20Summoned the sermon taster to high box pews
0:03:20 > 0:03:23And neighbouring towers and spirelets joined the ringing
0:03:23 > 0:03:26With answering echoes from heavy commercial walls
0:03:26 > 0:03:31Till all were drowned as the sailing clouds went singing
0:03:31 > 0:03:35On the roaring flood of a 12-voiced peal from Paul's.
0:03:35 > 0:03:40Then would the years fall off and Thames run slowly
0:03:40 > 0:03:44Out into marshy meadowland flowed the fleet
0:03:44 > 0:03:48And the walled-in City of London, smelly and holy
0:03:48 > 0:03:52Had a tinkling mass house in every cavernous street.
0:03:52 > 0:03:56The bells rang down and St Michael Paternoster
0:03:56 > 0:04:00Would take me into its darkness from College Hill.
0:04:00 > 0:04:04Or Christ Church Newgate Street (with St Leonard Foster)
0:04:04 > 0:04:09Would be late for Matins and ringing insistence still.
0:04:09 > 0:04:13Last of the east wall sculpture a cherub gazes
0:04:13 > 0:04:17On broken arches of rosebay, bracken and dock
0:04:17 > 0:04:22Where once I heard the roll of the Prayer Book phrases
0:04:22 > 0:04:25And the sumptuous tick of the old west gallery clock.
0:04:27 > 0:04:31Snow falls in the buffet of Aldersgate station.
0:04:31 > 0:04:36Toiling and doomed from Moorgate Street puffs the train
0:04:36 > 0:04:41For us of the steam and gas-light, the lost generation
0:04:41 > 0:04:45The new white cliffs of the City are built in vain.
0:04:58 > 0:05:04What people don't realise, who build these big blocks in the City,
0:05:04 > 0:05:08these huge new white cliffs, is what an awful time
0:05:08 > 0:05:13the people who have to work in them have in getting to them.
0:05:13 > 0:05:16The struggle, for instance,
0:05:16 > 0:05:20that business girls, young business girls, fresh from home,
0:05:20 > 0:05:27have to go through in order to reach these cliffs.
0:05:27 > 0:05:30I'm always touched by the sight
0:05:30 > 0:05:33of people struggling to get to these places
0:05:33 > 0:05:39and they live very often in furnished rooms in large houses,
0:05:39 > 0:05:42originally built for large families
0:05:42 > 0:05:45and now turned into flats.
0:05:45 > 0:05:48You can see them all over London,
0:05:48 > 0:05:54particularly in the inner, steam railway sort of suburb.
0:05:54 > 0:06:02And this poem, I wrote about business girls in Camden Town.
0:06:03 > 0:06:05From the geyser ventilators
0:06:05 > 0:06:10Autumn winds are blowing down on a thousand business women
0:06:10 > 0:06:13Having baths in Camden Town
0:06:13 > 0:06:16Waste pipes chuckle into runnels
0:06:16 > 0:06:19Steam's escaping here and there
0:06:19 > 0:06:21Morning trains through Camden cutting
0:06:21 > 0:06:24Shape the Crescent and the Square.
0:06:25 > 0:06:27Early nip of changeful autumn
0:06:27 > 0:06:31Dahlias glimpsed through garden doors
0:06:31 > 0:06:34At the back, precarious bathrooms
0:06:34 > 0:06:36Jutting out from upper floors
0:06:36 > 0:06:39And behind their frail partitions
0:06:39 > 0:06:42Business women lie and soak,
0:06:42 > 0:06:45Seeing through the draughty skylight
0:06:45 > 0:06:48Flying clouds and railway smoke.
0:06:48 > 0:06:52Rest you there, poor, unbeloved ones
0:06:52 > 0:06:54Lap your loneliness in heat.
0:06:54 > 0:06:58All too soon the tiny breakfast
0:06:58 > 0:07:01Trolley-bus and windy street.
0:07:11 > 0:07:14Unfortunately, I can't keep sex out of my poems.
0:07:14 > 0:07:17It would be hypocritical for me to do so.
0:07:17 > 0:07:20Everywhere you go in London in public transport,
0:07:20 > 0:07:24you can't get away from the beauty of the girls.
0:07:39 > 0:07:41The sort of girl I like to see
0:07:41 > 0:07:45Smiles down from her great height at me.
0:07:45 > 0:07:48She stands in strong, athletic pose
0:07:48 > 0:07:51And wrinkles her retrousse nose.
0:07:51 > 0:07:53Is it distaste that makes her frown
0:07:53 > 0:07:56So furious and freckled, down
0:07:56 > 0:07:58On an unhealthy worm like me?
0:07:58 > 0:08:01Or am I what she likes to see?
0:08:01 > 0:08:04I do not know, though much I care,
0:08:04 > 0:08:07Eithe genoimen, would I were
0:08:07 > 0:08:09(Forgive me, shade of Rupert Brooke)
0:08:09 > 0:08:11An object fit to claim her look.
0:08:11 > 0:08:14Oh! would I were her racket press'd
0:08:14 > 0:08:16With hard excitement to her breast
0:08:16 > 0:08:18And swished into the sunlit air
0:08:18 > 0:08:21Arm-high above her tousled hair,
0:08:21 > 0:08:23And banged against the bounding ball
0:08:23 > 0:08:26"Oh! Plung!" my tauten'd strings would call,
0:08:26 > 0:08:29"Oh! Plung my darling, break my strings
0:08:29 > 0:08:32"For you I will do brilliant things."
0:08:32 > 0:08:34And when the match is over, I
0:08:34 > 0:08:37Would flop beside you, hear you sigh;
0:08:37 > 0:08:41And then with what supreme caress,
0:08:41 > 0:08:43You'd tuck me up into my press.
0:08:43 > 0:08:46Fair tigress of the tennis courts,
0:08:46 > 0:08:50So short in sleeve and strong in shorts,
0:08:50 > 0:08:52Little, alas, to you I mean,
0:08:52 > 0:08:56For I am bald and old and green.
0:08:56 > 0:08:57CHILDREN SHOUT PLAYFULLY
0:09:09 > 0:09:13Finally, some of my verses are connected with childhood
0:09:13 > 0:09:17and memories of it which we all share in common.
0:09:17 > 0:09:20My own childhood wasn't quite so successful
0:09:20 > 0:09:24as that of those beautiful tennis-playing girls
0:09:24 > 0:09:26we've just seen.
0:09:26 > 0:09:29And the other day I went back to Hertfordshire
0:09:29 > 0:09:32and my verse is always about places
0:09:32 > 0:09:37and in Hertfordshire, I recollected painful times
0:09:37 > 0:09:41when I went wrong, shooting with my father
0:09:41 > 0:09:44and that brought forth these verses.
0:09:45 > 0:09:48I had forgotten Hertfordshire,
0:09:48 > 0:09:51The large unwelcome fields of roots
0:09:51 > 0:09:54Where with my knickerbockered sire
0:09:54 > 0:09:57I trudged in syndicated shoots;
0:09:57 > 0:09:59And that unlucky day when I
0:09:59 > 0:10:01Fired by mistake into the ground
0:10:01 > 0:10:04Under a Lionel Edwards sky
0:10:04 > 0:10:07And felt disapprobation round.
0:10:07 > 0:10:11The slow drive home by motor-car,
0:10:11 > 0:10:14A heavy Rover Landaulette,
0:10:14 > 0:10:17Through Welwyn, Hatfield, Potters Bar,
0:10:17 > 0:10:22Tweed and cigar smoke, gloom and wet:
0:10:22 > 0:10:25And now I see these fields once more
0:10:25 > 0:10:28Clothed, thank the Lord, in summer green,
0:10:28 > 0:10:31Pale corn waves rippling to a shore
0:10:31 > 0:10:34The shadowy cliffs of elm between,
0:10:34 > 0:10:37Colour-washed cottages reed-thatched,
0:10:37 > 0:10:39and weather-boarded water mills.
0:10:39 > 0:10:43Flint churches, brick and plaster patched,
0:10:43 > 0:10:46On mildly undistinguished hills -
0:10:46 > 0:10:49They still are there. But now the shire
0:10:49 > 0:10:52Suffers a devastating change,
0:10:52 > 0:10:55Its general landscape strung with wire,
0:10:55 > 0:10:58Old places looking ill and strange.
0:10:58 > 0:11:02One can't be sure where London ends,
0:11:02 > 0:11:05New towns have filled the fields of root
0:11:05 > 0:11:08Where father and his business friends
0:11:08 > 0:11:11Drove in the Landaulette to shoot;
0:11:11 > 0:11:14Tall concrete standards line the lane,
0:11:14 > 0:11:17Brick boxes glitter in the sun:
0:11:17 > 0:11:20Far more would these have caused him pain
0:11:20 > 0:11:23Than my mishandling of a gun.