Alan Bennett

The Old CrowdA Private FunctionPrick Up Your Ears102 Boulevard HaussmannThe Madness of King George Starring characters as diverse as George III, Marcel Proust, Joe Orton, and a pig called Betty, Alan Bennetts masterful work for the screen gives as much enjoyment in the reading as it did in the viewing. This classic collection contains a new essay by Alan Bennett, besides the original introductions to A Private Function, Prick Up Your Ears and The Madness of King George. Two companion volumes of Alan Bennetts TV plays are published as Me, Im Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Rolling Home.

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 Burnett and the classics) and intelligently. Her reading naturally changes her world view and her relationship with people like the oleaginous prime minister and his repellent advisers. She comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with much that she has to do. In short, her reading is subversive. The consequence is, of course, surprising, mildly shocking and very funny.

The Talking Heads monologues are widely regarded as one of Alan Bennetts finest dramatic achievements. First broadcast on BBC TV and BBC Radio 4 in the 1980s and 1990s, they won a host of awards and huge popular acclaim, and remain among his most admired works today.This collection includes all twelve Talking Heads, plus the precursor of that series, A Woman of No Importance. Beautifully crafted and full of compassion and wry observation, each tale is ripe with the quirky, insightful detail that has become Bennett's trademark. The monologues are:A Woman of No Importance (Patricia Routledge); A Chip in the Sugar (Alan Bennett); A Lady of Letters (Patricia Routledge); Bed Among the Lentils (Anna Massey); Soldiering On (Stephanie Cole); Her Big Chance (Julie Walters); A Cream Cracker Under the Settee (ThoraHird); Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet (Patricia Routledge); The Hand of God (Eileen Atkins); Playing Sandwiches (David Haig); The Outside Dog (Julie Walters); Nights in the Gardens of Spain (Penelope Wilton) and Waiting for the Telegram (Thora Hird).

Already a bestseller, this is a wonderfully entertaining collection of Alan Bennetts prose writings. Writing Home brings together diaries, reminiscences and reviews to give us a unique and unforgettable portrait of one of Englands leading playwrights. As a memoir it covers the production of his very first play, Forty Years On, which starred John Gieldgud. His television series Talking Heads has become a modern-day classic; as part of the 1960s revue Beyond the Fringe Bennett helped to kick-start the English satire revolution, and has since remained one of our leading dramatists, most recently with The History Boys at the National Theatre. At the heart of the book is The Lady in The Van, since adapted into a radio play featuring Dame Maggie Smith. It is the true account of Miss Mary Shepherd, a homeless tramp who took up residence in Bennetts garden and stayed for fifteen years. This new edition also includes Bennetts introduction to his Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Madness of King George and his more recent diaries.

Alan Bennetts A Life Like Other Peoples is a poignant family memoir offering a portrait of his parents marriage and recalling his Leeds childhood, Christmases with Grandma Peel, and the lives, loves and deaths of his unforgettable aunties Kathleen and Myra. Bennetts powerful account of his mothers descent into depression and later dementia comes hand in hand with the uncovering of a long-held tragic secret. A heartrending and at times irresistibly funny work of autobiography by one of the best-loved English writers alive today.

Funny, touching and real, this second collection of Alan Bennetts classic work for television from the late 1970s and early 1980s is full of fine observations of life as it is lived. Often imitated but never equalled, Bennetts work is a masterclass in how to write for the small screen and gives as much enjoyment in the reading as it did in the viewing. The television plays included in this volume are Our Winnie, All Day on the Sands, One Fine Day, Marks, Say Something Happened, Rolling Home and Intensive Care. This volume also contains a new general introduction by Alan Bennett. A companion volume of Alan Bennetts work from the 1970s is published as Me, Im Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

This second volume of plays by Alan Bennett includes his two Kafka plays, one an hilarious comedy, the other a profound and searching drama. Also included is An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution. The fascination of these two plays lies in the way they question our accepted notions of treachery and, in different ways, make a sympathetic case for Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt.

An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks hes a fool. In Alan Bennetts new play, staff room rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose.The History Boys premiered at the National in May 2004.Nothing could diminish the incendiary achievement of this subtle, deep-wrought and immensely funny play about the value and meaning of education .. In short, a superb, life-enhancing play.Guardian

A sale? Why not? Release all your wonderful treasures onto the open market and they are there for everyone to enjoy. Its a kind of emancipation, a setting them free to range the world ... a saleroom here, an exhibition there; art, Lady Stacpoole, is a rover.People spoil things; there are so many of them and the last thing one wants is them traipsing through ones house. But with the park a jungle and a bath on the billiard table, what is one to do? Dorothy wonders if an attic sale could be a solution. People premieres at the National Theatre, London, in October 2012. As with Alan Bennetts previous two plays, The History Boys and The Habit of Art, People will open in the Lyttelton Theatre in a production directed by the Nationals artistic director Nicholas Hytner.- Howre you doing?- Not sure.- Well why dont you get on the mobile to your dick and find out.

Auden often said that metre and rhyme led him down unexpected paths to thoughts he wouldnt otherwise have had, and in this respect versification and fornication are not so different. Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by amongst others their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. You are a rent boy. I am a poet. Over the wall lives the Dean of Christ Church. We all have our parts to play.Alan Bennetts new play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passions spent: ultimately, on the habit of art. In the end, said Auden, art is small beer. The really serious things in life are earning ones living and loving ones neighbour.

Designed to meet the requirements for students at GCSE and A level, this accessible educational edition offers the complete text of The History Boys with a comprehensive study guide. Highlights of Andrew Bruffs guide include:- detailed analyses of character, theme and structure;- a clear introduction to the context of the play and its author;- key quotations and activities both for the student working alone and in the classroom.An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks hes a fool.In Alan Bennetts award-winning and hugely popular play, staffroom rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it, about education and its purpose.

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 masterworks by one of our most highly acclaimed writers. Some thirty years after the original six, Bennett has written Two Besides, a pair of monologues. Each, in its way, is a devastating portrait of grief. In An Ordinary Woman, a mother suffers the inevitable consequences when she makes life intolerable for herself and her family by falling for her own flesh and blood; while The Shrine tells the story behind a makeshift roadside shrine, introducing us to Lorna, bearing witness in her high-vis jacket, the bereft partner of a dedicated biker with a surprising private life.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Sparklingly sardonic ... There really is no one like Bennett' Independent'Filled with elegiac memories and literary gossip ... a major National Treasure' Lynn Barber4 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 working from home my life is much easier, as I get regular cups of tea and a lovely hot lunch.

The ebook edition of Alan Bennetts celebrated monologuesAlan Bennetts Talking Heads is pretty much the best thing ever. David Sedaris Alan Bennett sealed his reputation as the master of observation with Talking Heads, a series of twelve groundbreaking monologues, originally filmed for BBC Television, starring Patricia Routledge, Thora Hird, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters, Stephanie Cole, Eileen Atkins, David Haig, Penelope Wilton and Alan Bennett himself. This collection includes: A Woman of No Importance, A Chip in the Sugar, Bed Among the Lentils, A Lady of Letters, Her Big Chance, Soldiering On, A Cream Cracker Under the Settee, The Hand of God, Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet, Playing Sandwiches, The Outside Dog, Nights in the Gardens of Spain and Waiting for the Telegram. Uplifting, deeply moving, full of humanity and wit, they remain essential, glorious reading.

George IIIs behaviour has often been odd, but now he is deranged, with rumours circulating that he has even addressed an oak tree as the King of Prussia. Doctors are brought in, the government wavers and the Prince Regent manoeuvres himself into power. Alan Bennetts play explores the court of a mad king, and the fearful treatments he was forced to undergo. It is about the nature of kingship itself, showing how by subtle degrees the rulers delirium erodes his authority and status.

'I seem to have banged on this year rather more than usual. I make no apology for that, nor am I nervous that it will it make a jot of difference. I shall still be thought to be kindly, cosy and essentially harmless. I am in the pigeon-hole marked 'no threat' and did I stab Judi Dench with a pitchfork I should still be a teddy bear.' Alan Bennett's third collection of prose Keeping On Keeping On follows in the footsteps of the phenomenally successful Writing Home and Untold Stories, each published ten years apart. This latest collection contains Bennett's peerless diaries 2005 to 2015, reflecting on a decade that saw four premieres at the National Theatre (The Habit of Art, People, Hymn and Cocktail Sticks), a West End double-bill transfer, and the films of The History Boys and The Lady in the Van. There's a provocative sermon on private education given before the University at King's College Chapel, Cambridge, and 'Baffled at a Bookcase' offers a passionate defence of the public library. The book includes Denmark Hill, a darkly comic radio play set in suburban south London, as well as Bennett's reflections on a quarter of a century's collaboration with Nicholas Hytner. This is an engaging, humane, sharp, funny and unforgettable record of life according to the inimitable Alan Bennett.