Downstream

there, in the silence and the
solitude, strangle it.’
After the Second World
War Henley was still a place
of play and pleasure. John
Betjeman’s 1948 poem
‘Henley-on-Thames’ is a
mournful work, yet as the
speaker stands ‘house-boat
high’ surveying the upper
Thames there are still dives
and shouts, boats for hire, the
sounds of ‘cheerioh’ and
‘cheeri-bye’.