Summoned by Bells is a BBC TV film of John Betjeman's verse autobiography of the same name – " a unique and touching account of an Edwardian middle-class childhood."

In the film Betjeman re-visits the places he knew as a child, the houses he grew up in, his schools, his holiday haunts in Cornwall, and his college in Oxford.

In an interview given to Radio Times Betjeman spoke about his verse autobiography and the making of the film: "I always had filthy reviews for it, and I didn't think it very good."

He recalls that Joe Orton was arrested for defacing books in the public library – among them Summoned by Bells – on which he had stuck a pornographic picture.

I was thinking about Tennyson's (probably Betjeman's favourite poet[1]) English Idylls and I had been reading Wordsworth's Prelude and I thought why not put down being a schoolmaster and this kind of thing into very plain blank verse.