Alan Bennett

Keeping On Keeping On is an illustrious addition to Alan Bennett's celebrated chronicles, capturing his diaries from 2005 to 2015. This captivating volume offers readers an intimate glimpse into the mind and work of one of Britain's most revered writers. With an uncanny ability to blend humour and poignancy, Bennett reflects on a decade rich in creativity and personal introspection....

The Sunday Times Bestseller. Killing Time is a wonderful surprise gift from Alan Bennett - a new story, set in a home for the elderly; a glorious, darkly comic treat. 'A mini-masterpiece.' - The Times 'Full of wit and style.' - Observer 'A terrific cast of characters, and secrets and chaos aplenty.' - iNews 'A geriatric Lord of the Flies.'...

4 March. HMQ pictured in the paper at an investiture wearing gloves, presumably as a precaution against Coronavirus. But not just gloves; these are almost gauntlets. I hope they're not the thin end of a precautionary wedge lest Her Majesty end up swathed in protective get-up such as is worn at the average crime scene. 20 March. With Rupert now...

The paperback of Untold Stories contains new unpublished diaries, as well as a poignant memoir of his family and of growing up in Leeds, together with his much celebrated diary for the years 1996-2004, and numerous other exceptional essays, reviews, and comic pieces. Since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s, Alan Bennett has delighted audiences worldwide with...

What would happen if the Queen became a reader of taste and discernment rather than of Dick Francis? The answer is a perfect story. The Uncommon Reader is none other than HM the Queen, who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. She reads widely (JR Ackerley, Jean Genet, Ivy Compton...

Thinking Betty was in the bath Graham was watching a late-night programme on Channel 4 called 'Footballers with Their Shirts Off' when she unexpectedly came in on the trail of the hairdryer. 'I didn't know you were interested in football,' said Betty. No one must ever find out that Graham is 'not the marrying sort'. Certainly not his wife, or...

20 September. Have a notion for a radio series - Awkward Conversations. Enough Said is Alan Bennett's fourth collection of diaries and prose. Covering the turbulent years 2016 to 2024, the diaries take us through lockdown, Brexit, the reign of Johnson, the rise of Trump and the death of the Queen. In between, we take the train with him back...

We have a choir and on special occasions a glass of dry sherry. It's less of a home and more of a club and very much a community.Presided over by the lofty Mrs McBryde, Hill Topp House is a superior council home for the elderly. Among the unforgettable cast of staff and residents there's Mr Peckover the deluded archaeologist, Phyllis...

From one of England's most celebrated writers, a funny and superbly observed novella about the Queen of England and the subversive power of reading. When her corgis stray into a mobile library parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen feels duty-bound to borrow a book. Discovering the joy of reading widely (from J. R. Ackerley, Jean Genet, and Ivy Compton-Burnett to...

Ever since the publication of Kenneth Grahame's novel in 1908, the characters of Ratty, Mole, Toad and Badger have delighted generations of readers. Now Alan Bennett has written an adaptation for the stage, a version which is true to the original and yet carries the distinctive Bennett hallmark. Alan Bennett introduces this edition, writing about the history of the project...

The gorgeous, pocket-sized edition of the two brand-new Talking Heads. 'Given the opportunity to revisit the characters from Talking Heads, I've added a couple more, both of them ordinary women whom life takes by surprise. They just about end up on top and go on, but without quite knowing how. Still, they're in good company, and at least they've made...

Writers like to elude their public, lead them a bit of a dance. They take them down untrodden paths, land them in unknown country where they have to ask for directions. In this personal anthology, Alan Bennett has chosen over seventy poems by six well-loved poets, discussing the writers and their verse in his customary conversational style through anecdote, shrewd...

You don't have to believe it. I always took the Matthew Passion with a pinch of salt. Ramsden, Yorkshire, 1916. The ambitious local Choral Society is depleted as men volunteer for the front, and plans for their St Matthew Passion by German composer J. S. Bach are scuppered by patriotic fervour. Dr Guthrie, the mysterious, exacting new Chorus Master, finds...

This book brings together his diaries for 1980-1995, with reminiscences and reviews, the diary he kept during the production of his very first play, Forty Years On, which starred John Gielgud, together with hilarious accounts of his many television plays, notably An Englishman Abroad and A Private Function. At the heart of the book is The Lady in the Van,...

The Shielding of Mrs Forbes Graham Forbes is a disappointment to his mother, who thinks that if he must have a wife, he should have done better. And her own husband would be better if she were mourning him than living with him. But this is Alan Bennett, so no matter the importance of keeping up appearances, what is happening...

The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett is his most famous work of non-fiction. It tells the story of Miss Shepherd, who in the 1970s lived in a Robin Reliant car opposite Bennett's house in Camden. After a series of attacks on her van, Bennett suggested she move to his driveway. Thus began an extraordinary 15-year friendship between a...

'Given the opportunity to revisit the characters from Talking Heads, I've added a couple more, both of them ordinary women whom life takes by surprise. They just about end up on top and go on, but without quite knowing how. Still, they're in good company, and at least they've made it into print.' Alan Bennett's twelve Talking Heads are acknowledged...

It's a dwindling band; old-fashioned and of a certain age, you can pick us out at funerals and memorial services because we can sing the hymns without the book. Alan Bennett writes: In 2001, the Medici Quartet commissioned the composer George Fenton to write a piece commemorating their thirtieth anniversary. George Fenton appeared in my play Forty Years On and...