A collection of four Alan Bennett plays, with an introduction by the author which describes the background to their writing and performance.[...]
A second collection of Alan Bennett plays, including "Kafka's Dick", "The Insurance Man", "The Old Country", "An Englishman Abroad", and "A Question of Attribution".[...]
A sale? Why not? Release all your wonderful treasures onto the open market and they are there for everyone to enjoy. This title opens in the Lyttelton Theatre in a production directed by the National's artistic director Nicholas Hytner.[...]
One of England's finest and most loved writers explores the uncomfortable and tragicomic gap between people's public appearance and their private desires in two tender and surprising stories. In "The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson, " a recently bereaved widow finds interesting ways to supplement her inc[...]
A collection of autobiographical works by prominent English writer Alan Bennett is comprised of his occasional journalism, his criticism, and, predominantly, his diaries, which consider such areas as the theater, famous actors, and politics. Reprint.[...]
From the author ofThe History Boys and The Clothes They Stood Up In
A deliciously funny novella that celebrates the pleasure of reading. When the Queen in pursuit of her wandering corgis stumbles upon a mobile library she feels duty bound to borrow a book. Aided by Norman, [...]
At a boys' grammar school in Sheffield, eight boys are being coached for the Oxbridge entrance exams. This title includes four characters, each with contrasting outlooks on teaching: Hector, an eccentric English teacher; Irwin, a teacher who sees history as 'entertainment'; Mrs Lintott, a traditiona[...]
Michael Gambon is Guy Burgess and Penelope Wilton the actress Coral Browne in this re-telling of a real-life incident. Alan Bennett's take on Burgess' encounter with Browne in Moscow is both poignant and comic, and the play examines Burgess' life in exile, his love of England and his even greater lo[...]
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 he's a fool. In Alan Bennett's new play, staff room rival[...]
'Untold Stories' is a collection of Alan Bennett's prose. The title piece is a poignant family memoir with an account of the marriage of his parents, the lives and deaths of his aunts and the uncovering of a long-held family secret. Also included are essays, reviews, lectures and reminiscences.[...]
A sale? Why not? Release all your wonderful treasures onto the open market and they are there for everyone to enjoy. It's 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[...]
Writers like to elude their public, lead them a bit of a dance. In this personal anthology, the author has chosen over seventy poems by six well-loved poets, discussing the writers and their verse in his customary conversational style through anecdote, shrewd appraisal and spare but telling biograph[...]
In 1974, Alan Bennett encountered Miss Mary Shepherd, an elderly eccentric who was living in a van in the street near his home in Camden Town. He eventually allowed her to park her van in his garden, the idea being that she would stay three months - but those three months extended to fifteen years. [...]
Returning home from the opera, Mr. and Mrs. Ransome discover that their Notting Hill flat has been stripped bare of everything and are forced to adjust to the possibilities of life without the possessions that define them.[...]
When they strayed through the grounds of Buckingham Palace, the Queen discovered the City of Westminster travelling library. One book leads to another and the Queen is soon engrossed in the delights of reading. However, the royal household dislikes the Queen's new interest; it makes them uneasy. Boo[...]
From Alan Bennett's Baffled at a Bookcase, to Lucy Mangan's Ten Library Rules, famous writers tell us all about how libraries are used and why they're important. Tom Holland writes about libraries in the ancient world, while Seth Godin describes what a library will look like in 2020. Lionel Shriver [...]
A collection of twelve full-cast BBC Radio productions of plays by Alan Bennett. It includes: Forty Years On; A Visit from Miss Prothero; Say Something Happened; Kafka's Dick; Two in Torquay; The Madness of George III; The History Boys; An Englishman Abroad; A Question of Attribution; The Lady in th[...]
Alan Bennett reads five much-loved stories by Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carroll and AA Milne. Alan Bennett's distinctive readings of these cherished children's stories have become classics in their own right. Portraying each character in his own inimitable fashion, his delightfully expressive voice per[...]
Alan Bennett reads the latest instalment of his diaries, as heard on BBC Radio 4 s Book of the Week. Following on from Alan Bennett's bestselling, award-winning prose collections Writing Home and Untold Stories, Keeping On Keeping On is a third anthology featuring his unique observations, recollecti[...]
Features none other than HM the Queen who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. Her reading naturally changes her world view and her relationship with people like the oleaginous prime minister and his repellent advisers. The consequ[...]
'The Shielding of Mr 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 app[...]
A work of non-fiction that follows the author's other little blockbuster "The Clothes They Stood Up In".[...]