<\/p>\n
CS Lewis never liked John Betjeman. The author of the Chronicles of Narnia<\/em> happened to be the younger man\u2019s tutor at Oxford in the 1920s and confessed to his diaries that he found the future Poet Laureate an \u201cidle prig\u201d and \u201cvery conceited.\u201d<\/p>\n As the literary scholar Simon Horobin recently revealed, Lewis was also instrumental in ensuring Betjeman received the lowest grade of the entire student body in 1928. Worse, when Betjeman asked Lewis for a reference, Lewis described him as \u201ckind-hearted and cheerful\u201d (brutal) which Betjeman claimed had cost him three jobs. Betjeman was so wounded by the encounters, he confessed that he needed psychoanalysis.<\/p>\n As literary feuds go, this is one to treasure: so English, so understated. It does not have the theatrics of Gore Vidal<\/a> vs Norman Mailer. The pair famously sparred over a book review on American TV in 1971 (truly, these were different times) and were still at it six years later when Mailer punched Vidal at a cocktail party. \u201cOnce again, words fail Norman Mailer,\u201d said Vidal as he picked himself up.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not quite Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman, either: \u201cEvery word she writes is a lie. Including \u2018and\u2019 and \u2018the\u2019.\u201d (This one backfired: Hellman sued.)<\/p>\n But as with the best literary feuds<\/a>, it combines grandstanding eloquence with marvellous pettiness and a hatred that barely seems rational. The death of his rival, John Keats at 25, seems to have caused Lord Byron great amusement: especially when Shelley claimed that a bad review had hastened Keats\u2019s decline. \u201cTis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, \/ Should let itself be snuffed out by an Article.\u201d<\/p>\n What did Betjeman do to incur his tutor\u2019s disdain? We can\u2019t fully know. And so we enter the realm of myth. Why is Medea evil? Why is Satan so mad? Why did the tiger come to tea?<\/p>\n What is delicious about these public<\/a> (and more often than not, posthumous) eruptions of author-on-author violence is that you just know these resentments and jealousies are always there simmering under the surface most of the time. Vidal was rare in that he actually seemed to relish confrontation: \u201cWhat are the three most frightening words in the language? Joyce Carol Oates.\u201d<\/p>\n In today\u2019s literary world, writers are much more careful to be nice about each other. It\u2019s only rarely that it breaks out, as when Richard Ford confronted Colson Whitehead for a tepid review of a short story collection. \u201cYou spat on my book,\u201d Ford is reported to have said, before spitting on Whitehead.<\/p>\n But no one does it quite like the Russians. Leo Tolstoy once challenged Ivan Turgenev to a duel in 1861 after a dinner party set-to, though thankfully retracted before one or other of them got shot.<\/p>\n