John Betjeman was born in London on August 28, 1906, the only child of a prosperous silverware maker of Dutch descent. Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984) was a twentieth-century English poet, writer and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1972 until his death.

Betjeman’s first book of verse, Mount Zion, and his first book on architecture, Ghastly Good Taste,appeared in 1933. Churches, railway stations, and other elements of a townscape figure largely in both books. Four more volumes of poetry appeared before the publication of Collected Poems (1958). His later collections were High and Low (1966), A Nip in the Air (1974), Church Poems (1981), and Uncollected Poems (1982). He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1960. Betjeman died on 19 May 1984, aged 77, and is buried nearby at St Enodoc's Church.