"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!"

"[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."

"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 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."

"[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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"Old men in country houses hear clocks ticking Over thick carpets with a deadened force."

"Spirits of well-shot woodcock, partridge, snipe Flutter and bear him up the Norfolk sky."

"He sipped at a weak hock and seltzer As he gazed at the London skies Through the Nottingham lace of the curtains Or was it his bees-winged eyes? He rose, and he put down The Yellow Book. He staggered—and, terrible-eyed, He brushed past the palms on the staircase And was helped to a hansom outside."

"Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now, There isn't grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death!"

"Broad of Church and ‘broad of Mind’, Broad before and broad behind, A keen ecclesiologist, A rather dirty Wykehamist."

"Oh! Chintzy, Chintzy cheeriness, Half dead and half alive!"

"The Church’s Restoration In eighteen-eighty-three Has left for contemplation Not what there used to be."

"Sing on, with hymns uproarious, Ye humble and aloof, Look up! and oh how glorious He has restored the roof!"

"I am a young executive. No cuffs than mine are cleaner; I have a Slimline brief-case and I use the firm's Cortina."

"It's strange that those we miss the most Are those we take for granted."

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

"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."

"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."

"A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I Am too papistical, and High."

"A large and most unfriendly rat Comes in to see what we are at. He says he thinks there is no God And yet he comes... it’s rather odd."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"One mark of good verse is surprise."

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

"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."

"Hymns are the poetry of the people."

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