YOUNG BETJEMAN; NEW FAME, NEW LOVE; THE BONUS OF LAUGHTER (Complete Set of Three Volumes): Together with a copy of Betjeman's Uncollected Poems inscribed by the editor Bevis Hillier.

First editions, first printings of Hillier's three-volume biography with the addition of an inscribed copy of Betjeman's Uncollected Poems. From the library of the Philip Larkin scholar and biographer, James Booth, former Professor of English at the University of Hull, with his penetrating, acerbic pencil annotations throughout. Original blue and red cloth lettered in gilt to spines, in the illustrated dustwrappers. A near fine set, the bindings square and firm. In the near fine dustwrappers showing just a touch of shelf wear. The third volume with a previous owner's bookplate affixed to the front pastedown. Not price-clipped, each volume individually priced to its front flap. An entertainingly annotated set of Hillier's great Betjeman biography.

A complete set of Bevis Hillier's three-volume authorised biography of John Betjeman (1988-2004) from the library of Professor James Booth, former Professor at the University of Hull and editor and biographer of Philip Larkin; together with a copy of Betjeman's 'Uncollected Poems', edited by Hillier in 1982 (a 1992 reprint) inscribed "To James [Booth], with best / wishes & admiration / from Bevis 21. ix. 16". Hillier's inscription is followed by a short pencilled note by Booth: "My talk at the Betj. Soc / St James the Less, / Pimlico", and it was clearly in preparation for this talk that Booth read and annotated these copies of Hillier's biography (the first two volumes with Booth's pencilled ownership name and dates from early 2016). The extensive marginal annotations, written neatly in pencil throughout are, except for the occasional expression of approval ("OK"), frank, argumentative and entertainingly acerbic. Responding to Hillier's claim in the the preface to Vol. I. that what he has written is not a 'critical biography' ("a bastard art-form, one which yokes two disciplines that do not belong together") Booth writes in the margin: "cop-out – the poetry is what matters", while Hillier's dismissal of two earlier Betjeman biographies on the following page ("Neither [...] weighs more than an avocado pear") is succinctly dismissed by Booth: "patronising git!". Above a long paragraph detailing some of Betjeman's exalted social connections, Booth notes "I've lost track of all these toffs", while a quote from Rupert Lycett Green in Vol. III where he claims to have opened 'Blades', the London tailors, "because I couldn't buy a decent suit anywhere in London" is glossed: "I hate this world". Although Booth responds to Hillier's account of his twenty-eight year immersion in Betjeman's life leaving him "feel[ing] equipped to attempt a summing up of the poet and the man" with a marginal "pompous tit" and frequently complains of the longuers of the biography ("I finished this so it isn't quite interminable. Now for Vol III?" on the title page of Vol. II), his engaged, deeply informed, often funny (and rude) dialogue with Hillier's text is its own tribute to this monumental work, clearly a labour of love, that John Carey, in his glowing Sunday Times review of the final volume, described as an "enthralling, many-voiced biography, [...] an awesome achievement [that is] no more than Betjeman's due."