Grandmother's Footsteps: A Journey in Search of Penelope Betjeman

by Imogen Lycett Green

Penelope Betjeman, wife of the Poet Laureate, had a lifelong passion for India. It began when she was a girl in the 1920s, daughter of the Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, and did not end until her death on a Himalayan mountain in 1986. The year before Penelope Betjeman died, she took her granddaughter on an expedition to India. Six years later, Imogen Lycett Green returned to India to retrace that journey. The book starts with her three-day trek in the mountains to lay a memorial stone at the place of her grandmother's death in the Kulu Valley. It moves on to Green's dining with the German cultural attache in Delhi, travelling past the mosaic-filled palaces of Datia and Gwalior, and visiting the Goodwill Children's Village in the Palni Hills.

Genres: Asia, Nonfiction, Travel, Biography Memoir

360 pages, Paperback

First published March 25, 1994

About the author

Imogen Lycett Green is a columnist and author who has also written under her former married name, Imogen Christie. She is the daughter of author Candida Lycett Green and the granddaughter of the poet John Betjeman. Her journalistic writing has appeared in UK newspaper "The Spectator".