TRAVELLERS hurrying for trains across the upper concourse of London’s St Pancras Station cannot fail to catch sight of the bronze statue of Sir John Betjeman. It is an intensely humane, sensitive portrait of the nation’s favourite poet. He wears a shabby overcoat, his waistcoat bulges a little due to an incipient paunch and he carries a shopping bag. With a hand on his crumpled trilby, he looks up to the cast-iron Victorian roof, which, as an ardent conservationist, he had campaigned to save from demolition. It is as if he has just taken a breath in wonderment at the beauty of it all.
This conscious lifting into the air of the weight of a sculpture is a particular artistic signature of Martin Jennings, who fashioned the statue. It gives a seemingly inert artwork that dynamic sense of animation, of movement.
