In the film for television Not Only But Always, about the careers of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Bennett is portrayed by Alan Cox. Jury, Louise. "Historic night for Alan Bennett as his new play dominates the Olivier awards", The Independent, 21 February 2005 Once the play had opened and transferred to the West End, we were gratifyingly successful, celebrities beating a nightly path to the stage door, but Alan couldn't bear any of it, and would escape, unnoticed, to his bike and home to supper by the television. He hated the socialising, which is not unknown in the acting profession, but he didn't much care for the acting either, which is rather less common. He would sit in the dressing-room encircled with gloom. And yet as Blunt he was quite brilliant, and astonishingly consistent, provoking the same roars of laughter night after night. Sharing a stage with him was like sharing a stage with Paul Scofield: one feels a bit of a gooseberry. The public's lust for him knows no bounds. Perhaps that is what persuades him to appear so frequently before them, in one guise or another; he writes of himself as "someone who has had to stand on stage [and read Larkin]"; had to, Alan? The ageless physiognomy is endlessly photographed, the subject the unwilling but stoical victim. Playwright who rejected a knighthood says he's probably the last real monarchist left in Britain The Independent, 31 May 2009 His many works for television include his first play for the medium, A Day Out in 1972, A Little Outing in 1977, Intensive Care in 1982, An Englishman Abroad in 1983, and A Question of Attribution in 1991. [6] But perhaps his most famous screen work is the 1988 Talking Heads series of monologues for television which were later performed at the Comedy Theatre in London in 1992. A second set of six Talking Heads followed a decade later.

Untold Stories by Alan Bennett | Goodreads

We had left Mam at the hospital that morning looking even after weeks of illness not much different from her usual self; weeping and distraught, it’s true, but still plump and pretty, clutching her everlasting handbag and still somehow managing to face the world. As I followed my father down the ward I wondered why we were bothering: there was no such person here. In August 1960, Bennett – along with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook – gained fame after an appearance at the Edinburgh Festival in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe, with the show continuing in London and New York. He also appeared in My Father Knew Lloyd George. His television comedy sketch series On the Margin (1966) was erased; the BBC re-used expensive videotape rather than keep it in the archives. However, in 2014 it was announced that audio copies of the entire series had been found. [4] I mean don’t get me wrong, it was still a decent enough read, it’s just a bit of a trek and it will take a ton of commitment. That’s particularly true when you get to the diaries, because even though they do tie in with major events and take you behind the scenes on some of his creative projects, you’re still just sitting there reading diary entries. It’s not quite as dull as reading a collection of letters, but it’s not far off either. It had never occurred to me as a child that there were no photographs of my parents’ wedding. Along with the cut-glass fruit bowl, the stand of cork table-mats and the lady leashing in her Alsatian, a wedding photograph was a component of the sideboard of every house of every friend or relative I had been into. Typical was the wedding photograph of Uncle George and Aunty Flo, taken around 1925. Uncle George is in a suit, wing collar and spats, Aunty Flo in a short white wedding dress and veil. They are standing on the sooty steps of St Mary of Bethany, Tong Road in Wortley, where Uncle George sang in the choir, and are watched off camera by their respective families, the Rostrons and the Bennetts, and also by anybody who happened to be waiting at the tram stop at the bottom of Fourteenth Avenue. Bennett, Alan (2014). "Fair Play". London Review of Books. 36 (12): 29–30 . Retrieved 13 June 2014.

Lancaster Moor Hospital is not a welcoming institution. It was built at the beginning of the 19th century as the County Asylum and Workhouse, and seen from the M6 it has always looked to me like a gaunt grey penitentiary. It was a relief to find the psychiatric wing Mam was to be admitted to not part of the main complex but a villa, Ridge Lee, set in its own grounds, and as we left Mam with a nurse in the entrance hall it seemed almost cheerful. Dad was not uncheerful either, relieved that now at any rate something was going to be done and that she was ‘in professional hands’. Even Mam seemed resigned to it, and though she had never been in hospital in her life, she let us kiss her goodbye and leave without protest.

Alan Bennett - Wikipedia List of works by Alan Bennett - Wikipedia

His first work for television was a sketch show, On the Margin, and he also wrote the television series Fortunes of War. His first television play was A Day Out, followed by several more television plays, five for the BBC, published as Objects of Affection and Other Plays for TV (1982),and five for London Weekend Television, published as The Writer in Disguise (1985). His two series of monologues for television, Talking Heads I (1988) and Talking Heads 2 (1998), proved Bennett to be the master of television monologue, a genre he had first anticipated in A Woman Of No Importance (1982) - his first play starring a single actress.In those days, I don't suppose there was all that much to do in Sardinia, visiting the hospital quite a high point. Nowadays they probably go water-skiing".