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Hymn and Cocktail Sticks
Brief Description
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...
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Format: Paperback / softback
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George Fenton appeared in my play Forty Years On and has written music for many of my plays since, and he asked me to collaborate on the commission.
Two memoir pieces by the great Alan Bennett; the first set to music by George Fenton, the second a tender oratorio about his parents.
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Description
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 has written music for many of my plays since, and he asked me to collaborate on the commission. Hymn was the result. First performed at the Harrogate Festival in August 2001, it's a series of memoirs with music. Besides purely instrumental passages for the quartet, many of the speeches are underscored, incorporating some of the hymns and music I remember from my childhood and youth. The text includes both words and music.
Hymn is coupled with Cocktail Sticks, an oratorio without music that revisits some of the themes and conversations of Alan Bennett's memoir A Life Like Other People's. A son talks to his dead father as his mother yearns for a different life. It's funny, tender and sad.
The pinnacle of my social life is a scrutty bit of lettuce and tomato and some tinned salmon. Mind you, I read in Ideal Home that if you mix tinned salmon with this soft cheese you can make it into one of those moussy things. Shove a bit of lemon on it and it looks really classy.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780571405640
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 21 May 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Faber & Faber
Edition: Main
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 129.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 0g
Pages: 128
Collections
About the Author
Alan Bennett's works for stage and screen include Talking Heads, Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Question of Attribution, The Madness of George III, an adaptation of The Wind in the Willows, The History Boys, The Habit of Art, People, Two Besides, Allelujah! and The Choral. Diaries and prose collections are Writing Home, Untold Stories (PEN/Ackerley Prize, 2006), Keeping On Keeping On and Enough Said. Other work includes The Uncommon Reader, Smut and the Sunday Times bestsellers, House Arrest and Killing Time.
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