This first volume of the selected letters of the late Poet Laureate John Betjeman covers his life from university days through to his period on the staff of The Architectural Review, as editor of the Shell Guides in the thirties, as Press Attache in Dublin during the War and as an increasingly popular broadcaster and public speaker in the late fourties. The letters, written both to friends and family and to artists and writers such as T. S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh and Cyril Connolly record Betjeman's passionate interest in poetry and architecture and his infectious sense of humour.