Untold Stories

by Alan Bennett

Overview

Untold Stories brings together some of the finest and funniest writing by Alan Bennett, one of England's best-known literary figures.

"[Bennett] does what only the best writers can do—make us look at ourselves in a way we've never done before." —Michael Palin

Alan Bennett's first major collection since Writing Home contains previously unpublished work—including the title piece, a poignant memoir of his family and of growing up in Leeds—along with his much celebrated diary for the years 1996 to 2004, and numerous other exceptional essays, reviews, and comic pieces. In this highly anticipated compendium, the Today Book Club author of The Clothes They Stood Up In reveals a great many untold secrets and stories with his inimitable humor and wry honesty—his family's unspoken history, his memories of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and his response to the success of his most recent play, The History Boys.

Since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s, Bennett has delighted audiences worldwide with writing that is, in his words, "no less serious because it is funny." The History Boys opened to great acclaim at the Royal National Theatre in 2004, winning numerous awards, and is scheduled to open in New York City in April 2006.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312426620
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	03/20/2007
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	704
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.55(d)

About the Author

Alan Bennett has been one of England's leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s. His work includes the Talking Heads television series, and the stage plays Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Question of Attribution, and The Madness of King George III. His play, The History Boys (now a major motion picture), won six Tony Awards, including best play, in 2006. In the same year his memoir, Untold Stories, was a number-one bestseller in the United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations     xiii
Introduction     xv
Untold Stories     1
Written on the Body     127
Seeing Stars     157
The Ginnel     174
Diaries 1996-2004     177
Theatre and Plays     365
The Lady in the Van     367
The National Theatre     383
The History Boys     388
Radio and TV     407
Hymn     409
Cheeky Chappies     416
The Last of the Sun     423
Thora Hird     436
Lindsay Anderson     441
Art, Architecture and Authors     451
Going to the Pictures     453
Spoiled for Choice     477
Portrait or Bust     494
Making York Minster     515
County Arcade, Leeds     520
A Room of My Own     524
Denton Welch     532
England Gone: Philip Larkin     538
Staring out of the Window     543
Ups and Downs     555
A Common Assault     557
Arise, Sir...     578
An Average Rock Bun     596
Acknowledgements     629
Index     632

Editorial Reviews

Surprising, funny, and deeply affecting . . . [Alan Bennett] is a prose stylist of disarming grace and sly humor.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Untold Stories is intelligent, educated, engaging, humane, self-aware, cantankerous, and irresistibly funny. You want it to go on forever.” —The Sunday Times (London)

“Painfully intimate, stoically comic . . . Bennett's deadpan, self-deprecating humor translates perfectly.” —David Gates, O, The Oprah Magazine

“A great achievement and a book of lasting value.” —The Guardian (U.K.)

“A masterpiece of reminiscence. There is probably no other distinguished English man of letters more instantly likable than Bennett.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World

“It is a glaring example of modern English frivolity that [Bennett] is not simply regarded—with awe and terror—as one of the greatest living English writers. . . . If you want to understand the cultural wars in England now, and if you want to come to grips with a great writer and a challenging mind, then Bennett is your man.” —The Nation

“While he plays the old crank who is put upon by the world as it is, Bennett reveals an eye for detail and a feel for the complexity of human interactions.” —Publishers Weekly

“[Bennett] is a fine storyteller. . . . His memories of fellow actors Peter Cook and Dudly Moore are wry, witty, and honest.” —Library Journal

From the Publisher

Bennett has been known to British audiences of radio, television, stage and screen for decades. In the United States, he's best known as the screenwriter of The Madness of King George and, perhaps, for his experiences with Miss Shepherd, an indigent woman who set up a succession of vans in his front yard for 15 years. Now he returns with a shaggy collection of autobiographical sketches, diary entries, considerations of art, architecture and other authors, as well as an account of his bout with colon cancer. Returning to the precincts of his straitlaced, working-class British background, Bennett reveals a lost world whose influence and mores have trailed him his entire life. He revisits the Leeds that he knew in the 1940s, where he was first exposed to music and theater, and where his parents, both shy and retiring people, set lack of pretension as the highest value. While he plays the old crank who is put upon by the world as it is, Bennett reveals an eye for detail and a feel for the complexity of human interactions. And though he laments at length his own late maturation-physical, sexual and intellectual-and lack of sophistication, he shows himself to have achieved a measure of happiness. B&w photos. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

In his first major collection of prose since the 1995 British Book of the Year Award winner Writing Home, celebrated British playwright Bennett recalls his parents' marriage, his mother's battle with depression, and the colorful aunties. Dominant themes include suicide, madness, and the decline of his relatives in old age; lightening the narrative load are punctuations of characteristic British humor. As Bennett, the son of a butcher, captures life in 1940s working-class Leeds, he reveals his skill at witty description, especially in the stories about his mother's sisters, working girls before marrying later in life. The author himself narrates, in a distinctively sad voice underscoring the poignancy of the material. This newly available audio will appeal to fans of Bennett's previous works, particularly Writing Home.—Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo

Library Journal

An eclectic, entertaining and shelf-bending collection of essays, memoirs, introductions, diaries and commentary from the noted English actor, playwright and art-lover. In his introduction, Bennett (Writing Home, 1995, etc.) alludes to the colon cancer he battled in the late 1990s, and he concludes this massive and moving anthology with an essay about that experience-one of the strongest of many strong pieces. He quips, "Sometimes I felt that more people had seen the inside of my bum than had seen some productions at the National Theatre." This appealing self-deprecation is a hallmark of Bennett's prose, including his opening essay, a long piece about a number of his relatives-but with a sharp focus on the mental deterioration of his mother. Bennett also writes about his first awareness that he was gay (including a touching moment with his father, who asks, "You're not one of them, are you?"). Bennett includes segments from his diary (1996-2004), with comments on the deaths of many of his friends and coevals-among them, John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, John Schlesinger and Alan Bates. He comments, as well, on the death of Princess Di, 9/11, the Iraq War (which he despises). There are a couple of very compelling sections about the plays he's written (for stage, radio, film and television), and some essays about another of his loves-paintings. (In his diary, he chronicles visits to galleries all over the world.) There's also an interesting text of a speech in which he identifies four paintings that ought to hang in every English school. Bennett loves the poetry of Philip Larkin, and that poet's name and words pop up frequently in these pages. Among the best pieces is "Staring Out of theWindow," a brief, lucid essay about writing. Another very strong and troubling essay deals with a physical assault he suffered in 1992. An informed mind and heart, a generous spirit-these are the human qualities that emerge on virtually every page of this splendid collection.

Kirkus Reviews