Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett
Bennett in 1973, photographed by Allan Warren
Born	(1934-05-09) 9 May 1934 Armley, Leeds, England
Alma mater	Exeter College, Oxford
Occupation	Playwright, screenwriter, actor, author
Years active	1960–present
Partner(s)	Rupert Thomas

Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. He was born in Leeds and attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with the Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research medieval history at the university for several years. His collaboration as writer and performer with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival brought him instant fame. He gave up academia, and turned to writing full-time, his first stage play Forty Years On being produced in 1968.

His work includes The Madness of George III and its film adaptation, the series of monologues Talking Heads, play and subsequent film of The History Boys, and popular audio books, including his readings of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Winnie-the-Pooh.

Early life

Bennett was born in Armley in Leeds.^[1] The youngest son of a co-op butcher, Walter, and his wife Lilian Mary (née Peel), Bennett attended Christ Church, Upper Armley, Church of England School (in the same class as Barbara Taylor Bradford), and then Leeds Modern School (now Lawnswood School).

He learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists during his national service before applying for a scholarship at Oxford University. He was accepted by Exeter College, Oxford, from which he graduated with a first-class degree in history. While at Oxford he performed comedy with a number of eventually successful actors in the Oxford Revue. He remained at the university for several years, where he researched and taught Medieval History, before deciding he was not suited to be an academic.

Career

Bennett (second left) in Beyond the Fringe on Broadway c. 1962

In August 1960 Bennett, along with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook, achieved instant fame by appearing at the Edinburgh Festival in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe. After the festival, the show continued in London and New York. He also appeared in My Father Knew Lloyd George. His television comedy sketch series On the Margin (1966) was unfortunately erased; the BBC re-used expensive videotape rather than keep it in the archives. However, in 2014 it was announced that copies of the entire series had been found.

Around this time Bennett often found himself playing vicars and claims that as an adolescent he assumed he would grow up to be a Church of England clergyman, for no better reason than that he looked like one.

Bennett's first stage play Forty Years On, directed by Patrick Garland, was produced in 1968. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose, and broadcasting and many appearances as an actor.

Bennett's distinctive, expressive voice and the sharp humour and humanity of his writing have made his readings of his work very popular, especially the autobiographical writings.

Many of Bennett's characters are unfortunate and downtrodden. Life has brought them to an impasse or else passed them by. In many cases they have met with disappointment in the realm of sex and intimate relationships, largely through tentativeness and a failure to connect with others.

Despite a long history with both the National Theatre and the BBC, Bennett never writes on commission, declaring "I don't work on commission, I just do it on spec. If people don't want it then it's too bad."

Bennett is both unsparing and compassionate in laying bare his characters' frailties. This can be seen in his television plays for LWT from the early 1970s through to his work for the BBC in the early 1980s. 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. But perhaps his most famous screen work is the 1987 Talking Heads series of monologues for television which were later performed at the Comedy Theatre in London in 1992. This was a sextet of poignantly comic pieces, each depicting several stages in the character's decline from an initial state of denial or ignorance of their predicament, through a slow realisation of the hopelessness of their situation, progressing to a bleak or ambiguous conclusion. A second set of six Talking Heads followed a decade later, which was darker and more disturbing.

In his 2005 prose collection Untold Stories, Bennett has written candidly and movingly of the mental illness that his mother and other family members suffered. Much of his work draws on his Leeds background and while he is celebrated for his acute observations of a particular type of northern speech ("It'll take more than Dairy Box to banish memories of Pearl Harbour"), the range and daring of his work is often undervalued. His television play The Old Crowd includes shots of the director and technical crew.

He wrote The Lady in the Van based on his experiences with an eccentric woman called Miss Shepherd, who lived on Bennett's driveway in a series of dilapidated vans for more than fifteen years. It was first published in 1989 as an essay in the London Review of Books. In 1990 he published it in book form. In 1999 he adapted it into a stage play, which starred Maggie Smith and was directed by Nicholas Hytner. The stage play includes two characters named Alan Bennett. On 21 February 2009 it was broadcast as a radio play on BBC Radio 4, with Maggie Smith reprising her role and Alan Bennett playing himself. He adapted the story again for a 2015 film, with Maggie Smith reprising her role again, and Nicholas Hytner directing again. In the film Alex Jennings plays the two versions of Bennett, although Alan Bennett appears in a cameo at the very end of the film.

Bennett adapted his 1991 play The Madness of George III for the cinema. Entitled The Madness of King George (1994), the film received four Academy Award nominations: for Bennett's writing and the performances of Nigel Hawthorne and Helen Mirren. It won the award for best art direction.

Bennett's critically acclaimed The History Boys won three Laurence Olivier Awards in 2005, for Best New Play, Best Actor (Richard Griffiths), and Best Direction (Nicholas Hytner), having previously won Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and Evening Standard Awards for Best Actor and Best Play. Bennett also received the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Theatre.^[2] The History Boys won six Tony Awards on Broadway, including best play, best performance by a leading actor in a play (Richard Griffiths), best performance by a featured actress in a play (Frances de la Tour), and best direction of a play (Nicholas Hytner). A film version of The History Boys was released in the UK in October 2006.

Bennett wrote the play Enjoy in 1980. It was one of the rare flops in his career and barely scraped a run of seven weeks at the Vaudeville Theatre, in spite of the stellar cast of Joan Plowright, Colin Blakely, Susan Littler, Philip Sayer, Liz Smith (who replaced Joan Hickson during rehearsals) and, in his first West End role, Marc Sinden. It was directed by Ronald Eyre.^[3] A new production of Enjoy attracted very favourable notices during its 2008 UK tour^[4] and moved to the West End of London in January 2009.^[5] The West End show took over £1m in advance ticket sales^[6] and even extended the run to cope with demand.^[7] The production starred Alison Steadman, David Troughton, Richard Glaves, Carol Macready and Josie Walker.

At the National Theatre in late 2009 Nicholas Hytner directed Bennett's play The Habit of Art, about the relationship between the poet W. H. Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten.^[8]

Bennett's play People opened at the National Theatre in October 2012.^[9] In December that year, Cocktail Sticks, an autobiographical play by Bennett, premièred at the National Theatre as part of a double bill with the monologue Hymn.^[10] The production was directed by Bennett's long-term collaborator Nicholas Hytner. It was well-received, and transferred to the Duchess Theatre in the West End of London, being subsequently adapted for radio broadcast by BBC Radio 4.^[11]

In July 2018, Alleujah!, a comic drama by Bennett about an NHS hospital threatened with closure, opened at London's Bridge Theatre to critical acclaim.^[12]

Personal life

Bennett lives in Camden Town in London, with his partner Rupert Thomas, the editor of World of Interiors magazine.^[13] Bennett also had a long-term relationship with his former housekeeper, Anne Davies, until her death in 2009.^[14]

Bennett is a lapsed Anglican; brought up in the Church, he became very religious as a teenager, but has "slowly left it [the Church] over the years", though he still holds a faith, and is often supportive of the restoration of churches throughout Britain.^[15]

In 1988, Bennett declined the award of Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 1996 declined a knighthood.^[16]

In September 2005, Bennett revealed that, in 1997, he had undergone treatment for colorectal cancer, and described the illness as a "bore". His chances of survival were given as being "much less" than 50% and surgeons had told him they removed a "rock-bun" sized tumour.^[17] He began Untold Stories (published 2005) thinking it would be published posthumously, but his cancer went into remission. In the autobiographical sketches which form a large part of the book Bennett writes openly for the first time about his bisexuality. Previously Bennett had referred to questions about his sexuality as like asking a man who has just crawled across the Sahara desert to choose between Perrier or Malvern mineral water.^[18]

In October 2008, Bennett announced that he was donating his entire archive of working papers, unpublished manuscripts, diaries and books to the Bodleian Library, stating that it was a gesture of thanks repaying a debt he felt he owed to the British welfare state that had given him educational opportunities which his humble family background would otherwise never have afforded.^[19]

In September 2015, Bennett endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election. He said: "I think Jeremy Corbyn has given things a good kick in the pants and the fact that he has done so well shows that people are concerned about these issues. The Government would have you think that nobody is concerned about these things, but they are."^[20] In October after Corbyn's election victory he said: "I approve of him. If only because it brings Labour back to what they ought to be thinking about."^[21]

Depictions

• In the film for television Not Only But Always, about the careers of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Bennett is portrayed by Alan Cox.
• Along with the other members of Beyond the Fringe, Bennett is portrayed in the play Pete and Dud: Come Again, by Chris Bartlett and Nick Awde.
• Bennett voices himself in the episode "Brian's Play" of the animated series Family Guy.
• Bennett was portrayed by Harry Enfield as Stalin, in an episode of "Talking Heads of State", in BBC Two's 2014 satirical Harry and Paul's Story of the Twos.^[22]
• Bennett is portrayed by Reece Dinsdale in a 2014 production of Untold Stories at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.^[23]
• Bennett is portrayed by British actor Alex Jennings in the 2015 comedy-drama film The Lady in the Van. He appears as himself briefly at the end of the film.
• In the season 2 episode "Mystery Man" of the Netflix show The Crown, Bennett is portrayed by British actor Seb Carrington.

Work

Books

The headstone, in Larch Wood (Railway Cutting) cemetery, of Alan Bennett's Uncle Clarence, subject of a 1985 radio monologue

• Beyond the Fringe (with Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore). London: Souvenir Press, 1962, and New York: Random House, 1963
• Forty Years On, London: Faber, 1969
• Getting On, London: Faber, 1972
• Habeas Corpus, London: Faber, 1973
• The Old Country, London: Faber, 1978
• Enjoy, London: Faber, 1980
• Office Suite, London: Faber, 1981
• Objects of Affection, London: BBC Publications, 1982
• A Private Function, London: Faber, 1984
• Forty Years On; Getting On; Habeas Corpus, London: Faber, 1985
• The Writer in Disguise, London: Faber, 1985
• Prick Up Your Ears: The Film Screenplay, London: Faber, 1987
• Two Kafka Plays, London: Faber, 1987
• Talking Heads, London: BBC Publications, 1988; New York: Summit, 1990
• Single Spies, London: Faber, 1989
• The Lady in the Van (essay in the London Review of Books), 1989
• The Lady in the Van (book), 1990
• Single Spies and Talking Heads, New York: Summit, 1990
• Poetry in Motion, (with others). 1990
• The Wind in the Willows, London: Faber, 1991
• Forty Years On and Other Plays, London: Faber, 1991
• The Madness of George III, London: Faber, 1992
• Poetry in Motion 2 (with others) 1992
• Writing Home (memoir & essays) London: Faber, 1994
• The Madness of King George (screenplay), 1995
• Father! Father! Burning Bright (prose version of 1982 TV script, Intensive Care), 1999
• The Laying On of Hands (stories), 2000
• The Clothes They Stood Up In (novella), 2001
• Untold Stories (autobiographical and essays), London, 2005, ISBN 0-571-22830-5
• The Uncommon Reader (novella), London, 2007
• A Life Like Other People's (memoir), London, 2009
• Smut: Two Unseemly Stories (stories), London, 2011
• Keeping On Keeping On (memoir & essays), London, 2016

Awards and honours

References

Further reading

• Peter Wolfe, Understanding Alan Bennett, University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 1-57003-280-7
• Alexander Games (2001). Backing Into The Limelight: The Biography of Alan Bennett. Headline. ISBN 0-7472-7030-9.
• Joseph H. O'Mealy, Alan Bennett: A Critical Introduction, Routledge, 2001, ISBN 0-8153-3540-7
• Kara McKechnie, Alan Bennett, The Television Series, Manchester University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-7190-6806-5
• Robert Hewison, Footlights – A Hundred Years of Cambridge Comedy, Methuen, 1983
• Roger Wilmut, From Fringe to Flying Circus – Celebrating a Unique Generation of Comedy 1960–1980, Eyre Methuen, 1980, ISBN 978-0-413-46950-2

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Alan Bennett

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alan Bennett.

• Profile at the British Council
• Interview BBC archive 6 December 2009 with Mark Lawson. (Video, 1 hr)
• BBC Interview Radio 4 Front Row archive. (Audio, 1 hr)
• Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery (3 pages)
• Alan Bennett on IMDb
• "Curtain re-opens on Bennett play" BBC News, 29 January 2009 – Video interview with Alan Bennett
• Alan Bennett at the BFI's Screenonline
• Guardian profile "Birthday boy" 7 May 2009 by Blake Morrison.
• Alan Bennett at Macmillan Books
• Alan Bennett's Talking Heads BBC Radio 4 "The Reunion". (Audio, 42 min)
• Archival material at Leeds University Library