PATRICK KIDD

OARS AND ROARS

JOHN BETJEMAN ALWAYS CAPTURES Englishness best. “Underneath a light straw boater/in his pink Leander tie/ev’ry ripple in the water caught the Captain in the eye.” Titled “Henley Regatta 1902”, four years before Betjeman was born, it was written in 1941, when people most needed to be reminded of a distant pleasure. Some say HENLEY, which this year runs from 27 June to 2 July, is still essentially an Edwardian garden party with a bit of rowing tacked on. Betjeman’s “sheds of Brakspear’s Brewery” became a boutique hotel in 2002, but the “strings of pennants house-boat high” and “baskets of geraniums swinging over river-gardens” remain. This straight stretch of the Thames, where Oxfordshire meets Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, is a joy once you get there, for the traffic jam down Remenham Hill…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2023

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