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Sir John Betjeman was one of the best-known poets, writers and broadcasters in the UK of the 20th century. He held the celebrated post of Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He began his career as a journalist and ended it as one of the most popular British Poets Laureate and a much-loved figure on British television.

 My image shows Sir John relaxing thoughtfully at his desk in a room of a building located on a narrow peninsula of the river Thames in southeast London, now dubbed ‘The Leaning Tower of Rotherhithe’. The house had been lent to him by Lord Snowdon, a British photographer and future husband of Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth’s sister, for a short while when his own home had burned down. Betjeman described his time here as ‘the most restful few months I had ever spent in London’, during which he enjoyed the ‘tremendous view’, including that of ‘the wharves and Georgian brick buildings of Wapping’ across the way. He had moved his bed to the riverside of the room, going ‘to sleep to the solacing sounds of water’. At low tide he would listen to the sound of the waves rippling over the pebbles below and described how at high tide ‘after a tug had passed the water made a plopping sound right against my room wall as thought I were in a ship’s hold’. 

 In Victorian times the building was owned by a barge company called Braithwaite & Dean. They used it as an office where workers on their barges would come to collect their wages. Now, ‘The Leaning Tower of Rotherhithe’ stands incongruously with a very pronounced lean to the left and in splendid isolation on the bank of the River Thames, much like a single tooth in a toothless mouth.