Though John Betjeman failed in his ambition to have Magdalen College’s Waynflete Building blown up, another of his most loathed pieces of modern architecture has bitten the dust. This is the Norwich Union building in Peterborough, whose ugliness I knew well, having worked in a newspaper office opposite for three years. The worst aspect of this tiled horror was its impact on the beautiful 15th-century St John’s Church just feet away from it.

The office block plays an interesting part in Betjeman’s life, since criticism of it in the Northamptonshire volume of the Shell Guides led to his relinquishing the editorship of the series after more than 30 years. The story is told by David McKie in his entertaining McKie’s Gazetteer (Atlantic Books, £16.99) published this week.

In essence, the petrol company was becoming increasingly dismayed at the guide’s attacks on ‘big business’, of which, of course, it was part. They urged Betjeman to tone down what Northamptonshire’s writer Lady Juliet Smith had to say about the Norwich Union’s 1964 building — that it was a disaster and an insult to the city. He refused and resigned, handing over the editorship to artist David Piper.

Strangely, perhaps, Mr McKie — who worked for The Oxford Times before departing for a distinguished career on the Guardian — appears not to have been told that the Norwich Union building has now gone, to be replaced by public open space. The picture of its demolition last year is taken from the website of the doubtless very relieved St John’s Church.

Though never one to pick nits (ho-ho) I also have to point out to Mr McKie that he is wrong to say Peterborough was once part of the county of Huntingdon. It was in fact very briefly part of a county called Huntingdon and Peterborough.