JOHN BETJEMAN ALWAYS CAPTURES Englishness best. “Underneath a light straw boater/in his pink Leander tie/ev’ry ripple in the water caught the Captain in the eye.” Titled “Henley Regatta 1902”, four years before Betjeman was born, it was written in 1941, when people most needed to be reminded of a distant pleasure.
Some say , which this year runs from 27 June to 2 July, is still essentially an Edwardian garden party with a bit of rowing tacked on. Betjeman’s “sheds of Brakspear’s Brewery” became a boutique hotel in 2002, but the “strings
