Alan Bennett: Keeping On Keeping On: Diaries 2005-2014

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, recollections and reminiscences. At its heart is his latest published collection of diaries. In these entries, covering the years 2005 to 2014, Bennett looks back on a packed decade that included writing four highly-acclaimed plays – The Habit of Art, People, Hymn and Cocktail Sticks, all of which premiered at the National Theatre – as well as the screenplays for the hit films of The History Boys and The Lady in the Van. In addition, he reflects on his 25 years of friendship and collaboration with director Nicholas Hytner, life with his partner Rupert Thomas and, radical views notwithstanding, his status as ‘kindly, cosy and essentially harmless’. Packed with perceptive impressions of people and places, sharp social commentary, expressive description and delightful jokes, this irresistible record of life according to Alan Bennett is a treasury of wisdom and insight. Duration: 2 hours 20 mins approx.

About the Author :
Alan Bennett was born and brought up in Leeds. He read history at Oxford and collaborated with Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore in the revue Beyond the Fringe in the West End and on Broadway. Bennett’s first stage play, Forty Years On, played for more than a year in the West End. Subsequent plays included Getting On (1971) and the farce Habeas Corpus (1973). His television plays include An Englishman Abroad (1983) starring Alan Bates and Carol Browne and A Question of Attribution (1988) which examined the treachery of art historian Sir Anthony Blunt. Alan Bennett’s other best known works include his adaptation of The Wind in the Willows (1990) for the National Theatre, The Madness of George III (1991, also for the National and subsequently an Oscar-winning film) and, for BBC TV, two series of the monologues Talking Heads. His collection of diary entries, essays and reviews, Writing Home, was Book of the Year in 1994. Alan Bennett has made many recordings for the BBC, including The Lady in the Van about the eccentric Miss Shepherd, who lived in a van in his garden, and which he adapted for the stage in 1999 and for the cinema in 2014. 2005 saw the publication of his first major collection of writing since Writing Home. Untold Stories brought together the very best of his writing, as well as his much-celebrated diaries from 1996-2004. In 2006, following a sell-out tour, Bennett’s play The History Boys returned to the National Theatre for an extended run. Set in a boys’ grammar school in Sheffield, it garnered many awards and went on to tour New Zealand and Australia and open in New York in 2006. It received six Tony Awards, and was adapted for the cinema that same year. Among Alan Bennett’s more recent work are the stage plays The Habit of Art (2009), People (2012) and Cocktail Sticks (2012) and the novella Smut (2011).