Alan Bennett

Kaikki on koirien syytä. Ilman niitä kuningatar tuskin olisi seonnut kaunokirjallisuuteen. Hänen Majesteettinsa tulee lainanneeksi kirjastoautosta ensin yhden romaanin, sitten toisen, ja pian hän ahmii kirjoja intohimolla, joka saa koko hovin pois tolaltaan. Kuningattaren lähipiiri pääministeriä myöten saa nimittäin huomata, että kirjallisuus on räjähdysherkkää tavaraa - kirjaimellisesti. Lopulta vaakalaudalla on koko kuningaskunnan tulevaisuus.

Now a major motion picture starring Maggie Smith, Alan Bennett's famous and heartwarming story "The Lady in the Van," and more of Bennett's classic short-form work Alan Bennett has long been one of the world's most revered humorists. From his acclaimed story collection Smut to his hilarious and sharply observed The Uncommon Reader, Bennett has consistently remained one of literature's most acute observers of Britain and life's many absurdities. In this new collection, drawn from his wide-ranging career, you'll read some of Bennett's finest work, including the title story, the basis for a new feature film starring Maggie Smith. The book also includes the rollicking comic masterpiece "The Laying on of Hands" and the bittersweet "Father Father Burning Bright," Bennett's classic tale of the tense relationship between a man and his dying father.

The screenplay edition of the major motion picture adaptation, starring Maggie Smith, of Alan Bennett's acclaimed story "The Lady in the Van." This edition features an introduction by director Nicholas Hytner (Miss Saigon, The History Boys), and a new preface and film diary by the author. From acclaimed author and playwright Alan Bennett, whose smash hit The History Boys won a Tony Award for Best Play, comes the screenplay of The Lady in the Van-soon to be a major motion picture starring Dame Maggie Smith. The Lady in the Van is the true story of Bennett's experiences with an eccentric homeless woman, Miss Mary Shepherd, whom he befriended in the 1970s and allowed to temporarily park her van in front of his Camden home. She ended up staying there for fifteen years, resulting in an uncommon, often infuriating, and always highly entertaining friendship of a lifetime for the author. Read the screenplay of the film destined to be among the most talked about of the year, and discover the unbelievable story of one of the most unlikely-yet heartwarmingly real-relationships in modern literature.

Adapted for the screen by the author from his celebrated memoir, Alan Bennett's The Lady in the Van, is directed by long-standing collaborator Nicholas Hytner. The film tells the true story of the relationship between Alan Bennett and the singular Miss Shepherd, a woman of uncertain origins who 'temporarily' parked her van in Bennett's London driveway and proceeded to live there for 15 years. Their unique story is funny, poignant and life-affirming. The Complete Lady in the Van contains a Foreword by Nicholas Hytner, a substantial Introduction with diary entries by Alan Bennett, the original memoir and the screenplay. The book includes numerous illustrations by David Gentleman, who sketched on set throughout filming, and a colour plate-section including behind-the-scenes photographs and stills from the film

In 1974, the homeless Miss Shepherd moved her broken down van into Alan Bennett's garden. Deeply eccentric and stubborn to her bones, Miss Shepherd was not an easy tenant. And Bennett, despite inviting her in the first place, was a reluctant landlord. And yet she lived there for fifteen years. This account of those years was first published in 1989 in the London Review of Books. The play premiered in 1999, directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Dame Maggie Smith, who reprise their roles in this new film adaptation. Shot on location at Bennett's house, Alex Jennings plays the author, alongside household names including Frances de la Tour, Jim Broadbent and Dominic Cooper.

Maggie Smith stars in this BBC radio adaptation of Alan Bennett's highly acclaimed autobiographical stage playAn eccentric old lady moves into a quiet street in Camden Town. There she remains, installed in her van in glorious self-sufficiency, until the council instructs her to move on. Then a kind homeowner invites her to move her van into his garden – where she stays for the next fifteen years. This is the fascinating story of the genteel vagrant who found a unique place in Alan Bennett's life and writing. But the drama is as much about the author himself as Miss Shepherd. Why did Alan Bennett let her commandeer his driveway? Was he acting out of kindness, weakness, or hidden guilt over not spending enough time with his own mother? Did he always subconsciously plan to exploit Miss Shepherd for literary profit? Thought-provoking and moving, The Lady in the Van tackles profound questions about social responsibility, homelessness and mental illness with a lightness of touch characteristic of Bennett the master storyteller. With a full cast including Adrian Scarborough, Marcia Warren and Alan Bennett, this bitter-sweet comic tale stars Maggie Smith as Miss Shepherd. Now a major BBC feature film, starring Maggie Smith and Alex Jennings.

Writers like to elude their public, lead them a bit of a dance. They take them down untrodden paths, land them in unknown country where they have to ask for directions. In this personal anthology, Alan Bennett has chosen over seventy poems by six well-loved poets, discussing the writers and their verse in his customary conversational style through anecdote, shrewd appraisal and spare but telling biographical detail. Ranging from hidden treasures to famous poems, this is a collection for the beginner and the expert alike. Speaking with candour about his own reactions to the work, Alan Bennett creates profound and witty portraits of Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, John Betjeman, W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice and Philip Larkin, all the more enjoyable for being in his own particular voice. Anybody writing poetry in the thirties had somehow to come to terms with Auden. Auden, you see, had got a head start on the other poets. He'd got into the thirties first, like someone taking over the digs.

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, as well as many other important productions. 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.

A sale? Why not? Release all your wonderful treasures onto the open market and they are there for everyone to enjoy. It's a kind of emancipation, a setting them free to range the world... a sale room here, an exhibition there; art, Lady Stacpoole, is a rover. People spoil things; there are so many of them and the last thing one wants is them traipsing through one's house. But with the park a jungle and a bath on the billiard table, what is one to do? Dorothy wonders if an attic sale could be a solution.

After two elegiac comedies about the decline of old England, Mr Bennett has now written a gorgeously vulgar but densely plotted farce that is a downright celebration of sex and the human body... a combination of hurtling action with verbal brilliance. Guardian

'We have, in the nick of time, a Play of the Year: Alan Bennett's The Lady in the Van is a wonderfully bittersweet comic diary of the years in which a lethally dotty and very smelly old bat parked her unroadworthy vehicle in Bennett's Camden garden, thereby providing him with a roughly equal amount of journalistic copy and guilty landlordly irritation. Sheridan Morley, Spectator

Mrs Donaldson is a conventional middle-class woman beached on the shores of widowhood after a marriage that had been much like many others: happy to begin with, then satisfactory and finally dull. But when she decides to take in two lodgers, her mundane life becomes much more stimulating.

One of England's finest and most loved writers explores the uncomfortable and tragicomic gap between people's public appearance and their private desires in two tender and surprising stories. In The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson, a recently bereaved widow finds interesting ways to supplement her income by performing as a patient for medical students, and renting out her spare room. Quiet, middle-class, and middle-aged, Mrs. Donaldson will soon discover that she rather enjoys role-play at the hospital, and the irregular and startling entertainment provided by her tenants. In The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes, a disappointed middle-aged mother dotes on her only son, Graham, who believes he must shield her from the truth. As Graham's double life becomes increasingly complicated, we realize how little he understands, not only of his own desires but also those of his mother. A master storyteller dissects a very English form of secrecy with two stories of the unexpected in otherwise apparently ordinary lives.

The decades-old question surrounding the death of the Red Baron has been embroiled in controversy. In this book, the author has uncovered new information and insights, shedding new light on the events of that day. This is a true story of young men who fought and died for their country. It puts the reader behind the stick of a Sopwith Camel from the pilot's point of view. This is the first of two volumes. Part One of this comprehensive study covers the life of Captain Arthur Roy Brown, who is well-known as an ace fighter pilot. The basic story is told in Brown's own words, via his previously unpublished letters home and the entries in his Pilot's Flying Log Book. His surviving Combat Reports are also included. The letters and the Combat Reports are unedited, and are used to tell the story within a military, historical and geographical context. They are accompanied by over 500 photographs, most of them never before published, plus diagrams and maps. Part Two of the book covers Captain Brown's encounter with Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, in detail. The story is told on the basis of recently released official documents of the time, together with recently offered letters written by some of the participants and witnesses. The new information corrects several well-established beliefs, and is able to provide the true story together with the necessary confirmation. In 1995 Alan Bennett toured the site in France where Captain Brown had attacked the Red Baron on 21 April, 1918. As an experienced pilot of similar aircraft, he had grave doubts as to the truth of some parts of the story. The eventual result was a book written in conjunction with Norman Franks: "The Red Baron's Last Flight." After plentiful information from readers, Captain Roy Brown's family and Wop May's son, plus further research in France, a considerably different picture of the entire event and of Roy Brown's life emerged. The new book, Captain Roy Brown, tells the complete definitive story. Margaret Harmon is Captain Roy Brown's daughter. She lives in Arizona, and provided most of her father's letters. Denny May is Wilfrid "Wop" May's son. He lives in Alberta and is very active in keeping his father's legacy alive. Alan Bennett finished compiling his book on Captain Roy Brown around Christmas of 2006. He was always striving for perfection to make sure his manuscript would be as complete as possible. He received correspondence from around the world to help him in this endeavour. Though not in great health towards the end, he nevertheless continued his research with passion and zeal. Alan Bennett passed away in January 2007.

'To be or not to be?' may be The Question, but it is not the only one. Hamlet, Part II, for example, answers a question about Hamlet that has plagued scholars, readers and play-goers for over four hundred years: What happened next? Prince Lear tackles yet another conundrum: What happened just before the start of King Lear, setting in motion the improbable events of Act I, scene 1? And in Fatal Loins, the question answered by the play is directly posed in the prologue: 'If Juliet and Romeo survive / Will their eternal passion stay alive?'“I am no stranger to Shakespearean parody… but reading Pontac I am (only slightly) mortified to find that he can write cod Shakespeare much better than Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Dudley Moore or myself” – Alan Bennett, from the foreword

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 in twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, among others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. Alan Bennett's new play is as much about the theater 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.

Alan Bennett's A Life Like Other People's is a poignant family memoir offering a portrait of his parents' marriage and recalling his Leeds childhood, Christmases with Grandma Peel, and the lives, loves and deaths of his unforgettable aunties Kathleen and Myra. Bennett's powerful account of his mother's descent into depression and later dementia comes hand in hand with the uncovering of a long-held tragic secret. A heartrending and at times irresistibly funny work of autobiography by one of the best-loved English writers alive today.