Bøker av Alan Bennett

Auden often said that metre and rhyme led him down unexpected paths to thoughts he wouldn't otherwise have had, and in this respect versification and fornication are not so different. Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by amongst others their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station.You are a rent boy. I am a poet. Over the wall lives the Dean of Christ Church. We all have our parts to play.Alan Bennett's new play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion's spent: ultimately, on the habit of art. 'In the end,' said Auden, 'art is small beer. The really serious things in life are earning one's living and loving one's neighbour.'

Adapted by the author from his autobiographical memoir, The Lady in the Van tells the story of Miss Mary Shepherd, whom Alan Bennett first came across when she was living in the street near his home in Camden Town. Taking refuge with her van in his garden originally for three months, she ended up staying fifteen years. Funny, touching and unexpectedly spectacular, The Lady in the Van marked the return to the stage of one of our leading playwrights.The Lady in the Van with Maggie Smith opened at the Queen's Theatre, London, in December 1999.

This second volume of plays by Alan Bennett includes his two Kafka plays, one an hilarious comedy, the other a profound and searching drama. Also included is An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution. The fascination of these two plays lies in the way they question our accepted notions of treachery and, in different ways, make a sympathetic case for Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt.

Alan Bennett's first collection of prose since Writing Home takes in all his major writings over the last ten years. 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. Bennett, as always, is both amusing and poignant, whether he's discussing his modest childhood or his work with the likes of Maggie Smith, Thora Hird and John Gielgud. Also included are his much celebrated diaries for the years 1996 to 2004. At times heartrending and at others extremely funny,Untold Stories is a matchless and unforgettable anthology. Since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s Alan Bennett has delighted audiences worldwide with his gentle humour and wry observations about life. His many works include Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, Talking Heads, A Question of Attribution and The Madness of King George. The History Boys opened to great acclaim at the National in 2004, and is winner of the Evening Standard Award, the South Bank Award and the Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play.'Perhaps the best loved of English writers alive today.' Sunday TelegraphUntold Stories is published jointly with Profile Books.

Already a bestseller, this is a wonderfully entertaining collection of Alan Bennett's prose writings. Writing Home brings together diaries, reminiscences and reviews to give us a unique and unforgettable portrait of one of England's leading playwrights. As a memoir it covers the production of his very first play, Forty Years On, which starred John Gieldgud. His television series 'Talking Heads' has become a modern-day classic; as part of the 1960s revue 'Beyond the Fringe' Bennett helped to kick-start the English satire revolution, and has since remained one of our leading dramatists, most recently with The History Boys at the National Theatre. At the heart of the book is The Lady in The Van, since adapted into a radio play featuring Dame Maggie Smith. It is the true account of Miss Mary Shepherd, a homeless tramp who took up residence in Bennett's garden and stayed for fifteen years. This new edition also includes Bennett's introduction to his Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Madness of King George and his more recent diaries.

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 rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose.The History Boys premi,red at the National in May 2004.'Nothing could diminish the incendiary achievement of this subtle, deep-wrought and immensely funny play about the value and meaning of education .. In short, a superb, life-enhancing play.' Guardian

This collection of Alan Bennett's work includes his first play and West End hit, Forty Years On, as well as Getting On, Habeus Corpus, and Enjoy.Forty Years On'Alan Bennett's most gloriously funny play ... a brilliant, youthful perception of a nation in decline, as seen through the eyes of a home-grown school play ... a classic.' Daily MailGetting OnWinner of the Evening Standard Best Comedy Award in 1971, Getting on is an account of a middle-aged Labour MP, so self-absorbed that he remains blind to the fact that his wife is having an affair with the handyman, his mother-in-law in dying, his son is getting ready to leave home, his best friend thinks him a fool and that to everyone who comes into contact with him he is a self-esteeming joke.Habeus Corpus'After two elegiac comedies about the decline of old England, Mr Bennett has now written a gorgeously vulgar but densely plotted facre that is a downright celebration of sex and the human body ... a combination of hurtling action with verbal brilliance.' GuardianEnjoyEnjoy uncannily foresaw the attitudes to English working-class life now enshrined in themeparks. 'The classic tug in Bennett between childhod Yorkshire and intellectual sophistication has never been better, or more daringly expressed.' Observer

This is a comic, ironic look at patronizing bureaucracy. The social services department of the local council is preparing a register of the elderly and eager June Potter is despatched. Mam and Dad are in their 60s, but they are perfectly able-bodied and have no intention of being registered.

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.

Green FormsDoris and Doreen are comfortably installed in an obscure department of a large organization. On a normal day they keep busy by flirting with nice Mr Tidmarsh in Appointments or pursuing their feud over a plug with Mr Cunliffe in Personnel. This is not a normal day. Someone has an eye on them and a shadow is falling across their tranquil lives. Are they about to be fired?A Visit From Miss ProtheroMr Dodsworth has recently retired. Sitting at home, he is contemplating his life and achievements with quiet satisfaction. There is a sharp ring at the door. His former secretary has come to ruin it all. Ironic wit and compassion mark this touchingly real story.

Muriel's husband Ralph has just died, leaving her well off, until her son Giles invests the money unwisely. Eventually, neglected by Giles and her disturbed daughter Margaret, Muriel ends the play alone and poor, determined to cheerfully "soldier on". From the stage version of "Talking Heads".

Graham, a middle-aged bachelor, emotionally retarded and chronically dependent on his mother, finds life difficult enough at the best of times. When Mother meets an old flame and seems set to marry him, however, Graham''s old insecurities rear their ugly heads again. Fate, eventually, rescues Graham and he resumes his normal life of banal muddle under his mother''s amnesiac tyranny.

A British Labour M.P., ten years into his second marriage, feels tethered in a time of change. He is distrustful on the one hand of the "mawkish mentality" of the young and, on the other, of the encroaching motorway life of the middle aged who can look forward to nothing more than the fairly imminent end of a not so very interesting road. "The play is a small jewel of bewilderment and regret." - London Sunday Times

The screenplay for the film of the same name.