R.B reading poems by Marvell, Byron and Causley

R.B. Reads Poems 

R.B. Reads Poems II

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Dowlish Wake revisited.

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Yesterday we went on a sentimental journey to our old Wednesday haunts, stopping off at Dowlish Wake where there is a memorial to John Hanning Speke, the famous Victorian explorer. We had visited the church at least twice with R.B. and I looked through the visitors' book to see if he'd written the date and  signed his name. Sure enough there was a ghostly signature, much fainter than it would have been ten years before.  It prompted me to look up my diary entry for that day:  Wednesday 4 July 2018 Just back from a visit to Barp on this damp, warm afternoon. We took him a small record player bought in the charity shop – and he seems delighted, having put on an ancient L.P.   Crack crack crack it went.... perfect. Went into Ilminster ('I have a letter to post to Australia') and then back to Dowlish Wake to have a look in the church for the Speke memorial which was worth seeing. A very Victorian church in a very English setting. Then we visited Perry's, the cider pla...
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'Jack' Lewis' Lament for Mrs. Minty Moor

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Today is the anniversary of the death of my friend R.B. and to mark the occasion here is one of the many poems he sent me over the years,. It's to do with C.S.Lewis, who is not a favourite with me and it is in manuscript form so I may have misread the odd word. I know that C.S.Lewis was known as 'Jack' and his brother 'Warnie' and I remember being told by Richard that Lewis' dog was called 'Mr Papworth' but I am not at all sure about the reference to 'Barboes'  at the end. If you can correct or add anything please do. When Richard was at Oxford he did briefly to tear himself away from the steam trains to hear C.S.Lewis lecture and I know he was an admirer, even managing to smuggle a copy of The Screwtape Letters  (which he knew I detested) into my house, via my wife. The poem has its weaknesses but is laced with the sadness that, as a lifelong bachelor himself, Richard shared with his subject. He signed the poem 'T' which he often used as...
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Richard Barttelot, by Stephen Carroll

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