"Within the human world I know Such goings-on could not be so, For human beings only do What their religion tells them to. [...] But all the same it’s strange to me How very full the church can be With people I don’t see at all Except at Harvest Festival."

"Yes, I haven't had enough sex."

"Safe were those evenings of the pre-war world When firelight shone on green linoleum, I heard the church bells hollowing out the sky, Deep beyond deep, like never-ending stars."

"Christmas and Easter may be feasts For congregations and for priests, And so may Whitsun. All the same, They do not fill my meagre frame. For me the only feast at all Is Autumn’s Harvest Festival."

"All I can say is that with age I find myself enjoying more and more the words and rhythms of the Book of Common Prayer. Apart from their meaning, they sound right and they are not talking down to us by being matey, and where they're a bit vague and archaic, that makes them grand and historic. The words give me time to meditate and pray; they are so familiar, they are like my birthplace, and I don't want them pulled down. We are all of us preservationists who have had the luck to come out of the womb and with all our faculties."

"I ought to warn you that my verse is of no interest to people who can think."

"Topography is one of my chief themes in my poetry...about the country, the suburbs and the seaside...then there comes love...and increasingly, the fear of death."

"Ghastly Good Taste, or a Depressing Story of the Rise and Fall of English Architecture."

"Hymn tunes are the nearest we've got to English folk music."

"The dread of beatings! Dread of being late! And, greatest dread of all, the dread of games!"

"Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans. Spare their women for Thy Sake, And if that is not too easy, We will pardon Thy Mistake. But, gracious Lord, whate'er shall be, Don't let anyone bomb me."

"One mark of good verse is surprise."

"Saint Pancras was a fourteen-year old Christian boy who was martyred in Rome in AD 304 by the Emperor Diocletian. In England he is better known as a railway station."

"The test of an abstract picture, for me, is not my first reaction to it, but how long I can stand it hanging on the wall of a room where I am living."

""I think the mystery of its winding drive gave me a respect for the system of hereditary land owing which I have never shaken off. (Rawsden Manor Wilts.)"

"It was through looking at churches that I came to believe in the reason churches were built."

"History must not be written with bias, and both sides must be given, even if there is only one side."

"Hymns are the poetry of the people."

"Steam took us onwards, through the ripening fields, Ripe for development. Where the landscape yields Clay for warm brick, timber for post and rail Through Amersham to Aylesbury and the Vale. In those wet fields the railway didn't pay. The Metro stops at Amersham to-day."

"[Standing and leaning on a bridge] Where are the advertisements? Where the shopping arcade, the coal merchant and the parked cars? This is a part of the Metropolitan Railway that's been entirely forgotten. Beyond Aylesbury it lies in flat fields with huge elms and distant blue hills."

"And here, screened by shrubs, Walled in from public view, Lived the kept women. What puritan arms have stretched within these rooms To touch what tender breasts, As the cab-horse stamped in the road outside. Sweet secret suburb on the City's rim, St John's Wood."

"[Sitting at table] Is this Buckingham Palace? Are we at the Ritz? No. This is the Chiltern Court Restaurant, built above Baker Street station, the gateway between Metro-land out there and London down there. The creation of the Metropolitan Railway."

"[Standing in centre of the pitch at Wembley] This was where London's failed Eiffel Tower stood. Watkins' Folly as it was called. Here on this Middlesex turf, and since then the site has become quite well-known."

"[Standing in front of a house in Harrow] A verge in front of your house and grass and a tree for the dog. Variety created in the façades of each of the houses — in the colouring of the trees. In fact, the country had come to the suburbs. Roses are blooming in Metro-Land just as they do in the brochures."

"Milk and then just as it comes dear? I’m afraid the preserve’s full of stones; Beg pardon, I’m soiling the doileys With afternoon tea-cakes and scones."

"Phone for the fish-knives, Norman As Cook is a little unnerved; You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes And I must have things daintily served."

"In the Garden City Café with its murals on the wall Before a talk on "Sex and Civics" I meditated on the Fall."

"And girls in slacks remember Dad, And oafish louts remember Mum, And sleepless children’s hearts are glad, And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’ Even to shining ones who dwell Safe in the Dorchester Hotel. And is it true? And is it true, This most tremendous tale of all, Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue, A Baby in an ox’s stall? The Maker of the stars and sea Become a Child on earth for me?"

"No love that in a family dwells, No carolling in frosty air, Nor all the steeple-shaking bells Can with this single Truth compare— That God was man in Palestine And lives to-day in Bread and Wine."

"Gaily into Ruislip Gardens Runs the red electric train, With a thousand Ta’s and Pardon’s Daintily alights Elaine; Hurries down the concrete station With a frown of concentration, Out into the outskirt’s edges Where a few surviving hedges Keep alive our lost Elysium—rural Middlesex again."

"And behind their frail partitions Business women lie and soak, Seeing through the draughty skylight Flying clouds and railway smoke.Rest you there, poor unbelov'd ones, Lap your loneliness in heat, All too soon the tiny breakfast, Trolley-bus and windy street!"

"No hope. And the X-ray photographs under his arm Confirm the message. His wife stands timidly by. The opposite brick-built house looks lofty and calm, Its chimneys steady against the mackerel sky."

"But I'm dying now and done for, What on earth was all the fun for? I am ill and old and terrified and tight."

"Belbroughton Road is bonny, and pinkly bursts the spray Of prunus and forsythia across the public way, For a full spring-tide of blossom seethed and departed hence, Leaving land-locked pools of jonquils by sunny garden fence.And a constant sound of flushing runneth from windows whereThe toothbrush too is airing in this new North Oxford air."

"In the licorice fields at Pontefract My love and I did meet And many a burdened licorice bush Was blooming round our feet; Red hair she had and golden skin, Her sulky lips were shaped for sin, Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack'd The strongest legs in Pontefract."

"There was sun enough for lazing upon beaches, There was fun enough for far into the night. But I’m dying now and done for, What on earth was all the fun for? For God’s sake keep that sunlight out of sight."

"Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy, The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy, With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won, I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won. The warm-handled racket is back in its press, But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less."

"We sat in the car park till twenty to one And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn."

"By roads ‘not adopted’, by woodlanded ways, She drove to the club in the late summer haze, Into nine-o’clock Camberley, heavy with bells And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, I can hear from the car-park the dance has begun. Oh! full Surrey twilight! importunate band! Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl’s hand!"

"The gas was on in the Institute, The flare was up in the gymn, A man was running a mineral line, A lass was singing a hymn, When Captain Webb the Dawley man, Captain Webb from Dawley, Came swimming along in the old canal That carries the bricks to Lawley."

"Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun, What strenuous singles we played after tea, We in the tournament — you against me!"

"Stony seaboard, far and foreign, Stony hills poured over space, Stony outcrop of the Burren, Stones in every fertile place."

"There are two things you need for a jolly good hymn. The first is a set of words that expresses the mood or sentiment of the worshipper. The second—and perhaps even more important—is a good tune ... with a simple popular melody."

"Think of what our Nation stands for, Books from Boots and country lanes, Free speech, free passes, class distinction, Democracy and proper drains. Lord, put beneath Thy special care One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square."

"He would have liked to say goodbye, Shake hands with many friends. In Highgate now his finger-bones Stick through his finger-ends.You, God, who treat him thus and thus, Say, "Save his soul and pray." You ask me to believe You and I only see decay."

"Child of the First War, Forgotten by the Second. We called you Metro-Land. We laid our schemes Lured by the lush brochure, down byways beckoned, To build at last the cottage of our dreams, A City clerk turned countryman again, And linked to the Metropolis by train."

"Pam, I adore you, Pam, you great big mountainous sports girl, Whizzing them over the net, full of the strength of five: That old Malvernian brother, you zephyr and khaki shorts girl, Although he’s playing for Woking, can’t stand up to your wonderful backhand drive."

"Oh shall I see the Thames again? The prow-promoted gems again, As beefy ATS Without their hats Come shooting through the bridge? And "cheerioh" and "cheeri-bye" Across the waste of waters die, And low the mists of evening lie And lightly skims the midge."

"A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well."