A Friend's Lost Films, Found: Betjeman Revisited
Peter and Jonathan were great friends for years, both with an interest in documentary film and a curiosity about people, philosophy and spirituality. Jonathan Stedall was one of British television's great quiet talents — a filmmaker who spent 27 years at the BBC after starting out at ITV, bringing a gentle, sensitive touch to everything he made, and working with figures as varied as John Betjeman, Malcolm Muggeridge and Alan Bennett. Over his career he made more than 120 films. Today, only a handful of them are available to watch.
So when a set of Stedall's films turned up — a documentary record of Betjeman's travels around the West Country, shot in 1962 and long presumed lost — it meant more to Peter than just an archival find. For Peter, being able to give these films a home on the channel — and a new audience — was a particular delight.
The four films that make up Betjeman Revisited follow the poet town by town through the West Country:
Episode | Towns |
1 | Devizes |
2 | Swindon & Northlew |
3 | Chippenham, Crewkerne & Sherborne |
4 | Sidmouth & Bath |
Each one pairs Betjeman's unmistakable eye for a place — his nostalgia, his precise sense of what made a town worth loving, his gentle satirical wit — with Stedall's equally gentle way of filming it. Betjeman (1906–1984) remains one of Britain's best-loved poets, and a passionate advocate for English architecture; he played a real part in popularising Victorian and Edwardian buildings and saving them from demolition during a period of rapid post-war redevelopment. Watching these films now, that advocacy and that affection for a vanishing England comes through.
All four films are available now, free of charge, on Arts Biography Channel's YouTube channel.
