Alan Bennett

One of NPR's Best Books of the Year: "Humorous, surprising, disarmingly human" essays and comic pieces from one of England's national treasures (The Washington Post Book World).
A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Book of the Year
A Lambda Literary Award finalist
Bringing together the hilarious, revealing, and lucidly intelligent writing of one of England's best-known literary figures, Keeping On Keeping On contains...

Untold Stories brings together some of the finest and funniest writing by one of England's best-known literary figures. Alan Bennett's first major collection since Writing Home contains previously unpublished work-including the title piece, a poignant memoir of his family and of growing up in Leeds-along with his much celebrated diary for the years 1996 to 2004, and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...

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...

The author's memoir of the lost world of his childhood, also focusing on the later years when his mother descends into depression and, later, dementia. He reveals a long-held family secret in this humorous autobiography.

Now a major motion picture from Fox Searchlight Pictures, The History Boys: The Film contains Alan Bennett's diary of the filming, the shooting script, and an introduction by director Nicholas Hytner, as well as an extensive plate section that includes a look behind the scenes and stills from the film. An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form (or senior) boys in a British boys' school are, as such boys will be, in pursuit of sex, sport, and...

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...

At a boys' grammar school in Sheffield, eight boys are being coached for the Oxbridge entrance exams. It is the mid-eighties, and the main concern of the unruly bunch of bright sixth-formers is getting out, starting university - and starting life. At the heart of The History Boys are four characters, each with contrasting outlooks on teaching and school: Hector, an eccentric English teacher with no interest in exams; Irwin, a young supply teacher...