Alan Bennett’s first play, Forty Years On, was produced in 1968; his most recent, Allelujah! in 2018. The Choral, for which he wrote the screenplay, was released in 2025. Bennett’s diary for 1983 appeared in the LRB, and we carried his diary every year after that until 2023. He now claims his life is so dull he won’t inflict it on LRB readers. The Lady in the Van was first published in the paper, and the LRB has also carried some of his Talking Heads monologues; short stories, such as ‘The Uncommon Reader’; pieces of memoir; and reviews, including ‘The Wrong Blond’, on W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, and ‘Alas! Deceived’, on Philip Larkin.
1 August. This is Yorkshire Day, so designated apparently since the 1970s, though the festival had hitherto passed me by. This year I am rung by several newspapers for my comments on this joyful day, with them hoping, I imagine, for some jolly ee-ba-gummery. I suggest Yorkshire might be celebrating its distinction as the only county to have elected a fascist MEP, but nowhere is this printed.
By the time Auden came to live in the Brewhouse, a cottage in the grounds of Christ Church, in 1972 I had long since left Oxford and in any case would never have had the nerve to speak to him. I’d first heard his voice in Exeter College hall some time in 1955. The lower end of the scholars’ table where I was sitting was only a yard or two from high table where the dons dined and,...
1 January, Yorkshire. A grey dark day and raining still, as it has been for the last week. Around four it eases off and we walk up by the lake. The waterfall at the top of the village is tumultuous, though the torrent has never been as powerful as it was in 1967 when (perhaps melodramatically) I envisaged the lake dam breaking and engulfing the whole village. The lake itself is always black...
2 January. Catching up on the literary round-ups at the year’s end I’m struck as so often by how cantankerous the world of literature is, and how smarmy, both backbiting and back-scratching much more so than the theatre or show business generally. I’m sure this is because actors don’t moonlight as critics in the way novelists or writers do. Few writers are reviewers
At Windsor it was the evening of the state banquet and as the president of France took his place beside Her Majesty, the royal family formed up behind and the procession slowly moved off and through into the Waterloo Chamber.
‘Now that I have you to myself,’ said the Queen, smiling to left and right as they glided through the glittering throng, ‘I’ve been longing to...
Alan Bennett reads from his 2018 diary, in which he puts on a new play and finds himself on someone’s arm.
Alan Bennett reads from his 2017 diary, in which he finds his métier at last.
Alan Bennett reads from his 2016 diary, in which he wonders what ’memes‘ are and goes to Venice.
Alan Bennett reads from his diary for 2015, in which he shouts at the top of his voice and works the red carpet with Alex Jennings.
Alan Bennett explains his objections to private education.
Alan Bennett reads from his 2014 diary, in which he looks after a dog and his memoir, The Lady in the Van, is made into a film.
Alan Bennett reads from his 2013 diary, in which he refuses to pay his bills and celebrates the National Theatre’s 50th birthday.
Alan Bennett reads from his 2012 diary, in which he appears on Family Guy and starts rehearsals for a new play.
Alan Bennett reads from his 2011 diary, in which he considers the banana skin and is mistaken for ‘another Alan’.
Alan Bennett introduces his latest play, The Habit of Art, and responds to questions from the audience about the play, and about his life and work to date.
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