Untold Stories

I gobbled this book down. It was better than a box of chocolates. For 3 nights I sat on my couch & felt as if I were having a dialogue with a particularly entertaining companion.

I don't quite know how to describe this book in a way that will convey enough information to give you an inking if you would like it or not. First some description perhaps: This is a somewhat random collection of writings from one of the premier British playwrights of our time. They vary from reasonably serious such as the introductory story on his father and mother, and the concluding story on his surviving cancer. Other stories deal with some of the plays he's written. The story of 'The Lady in the Van' is particularly appealing. You see, Mrs. Shepherd drove her van into his garden in 1974 and asked if she could park it there for a while. 'A while' turned out to be fifteen years. And she lived in the van. In 1999 he wrote a play about her that starred Maggie Smith. And the section describing the play is a cross between the story of Mrs. Shepherd (he finds a Mr. Shepherd very hard to imagine) and the writing of the play. Some dialog from a draft version of the play: 'Mr. Bennett. Will you look under the van?' 'What for?' 'One of these explosive devices. There was another bomb last night and I think I may be next on the list.' 'I can't see anything because of all your plastic bags.' 'Yes and the explosive's plastic so it wouldn't show, possibly. Are there any wires? The wireless tells you to look for wires. Nothing that looks like a timing device?' 'There's an old biscuit tin.' Rolling on the floor laughing? No. A delight to read? Absolutely.

I don't quite know how to describe this book in a way that will convey enough information to give you an inking if you would like it or not. First some description perhaps: This is a somewhat random collection of writings from one of the premier British playwrights of our time. They vary from reasonably serious such as the introductory story on his father and mother, and the concluding story on his surviving cancer. Other stories deal with some of the plays he's written. The story of 'The Lady in the Van' is particularly appealing. You see, Mrs. Shepherd drove her van into his garden in 1974 and asked if she could park it there for a while. 'A while' turned out to be fifteen years. And she lived in the van. In 1999 he wrote a play about her that starred Maggie Smith. And the section describing the play is a cross between the story of Mrs. Shepherd (he finds a Mr. Shepherd very hard to imagine) and the writing of the play. Some dialog from a draft version of the play: 'Mr. Bennett. Will you look under the van?' 'What for?' One of these explosive devices. There was another bomb last night and I think I may be next on the list.' 'I can't see anything because of all your plastic bags.' 'Yes and the explosive's plastic so it wouldn't show, possibly. Are there any wires? The wireless tells you to look for wires. Nothing that looks like a timing device?' 'There's an old biscuit tin.' Rolling on the floor laughing? No. A delight to read? Absolutely.

It's a collection of reminiscences and essays that, taken together, form an autobiography of Alan Bennett. The account of his Yorkshire childhood and family is at the beginning, and that of his bout with colon cancer at the end, but the cobbling together is slightly random, so that some pieces are just tipped in anywhere, and there are occasional verbatim repetitions of quite long passages. I wouldn't recommend starting at page one and reading through the whole six hundred and fifty-three pages but it's addictive to dip into. Many of the references to the British theatrical and television scene will be mysterious to Americans. A short test follows on which you may allocate yourself scores as a potential reader: Lived in Britain before 1970 (6 points) From Yorkshire (3 points) Gay (1 points) Interested in one of the following: Good writing (3 points) Beyond the Fringe , Monty Python, and the 1960's English satirists (3 points) Treatment of depression.(1 point) Treatment of cancer (1 point) London theater (3 points) Painting (1 point) Old English churches (3 points) Dealing with the homeless (3 points). Anyone with a score of 9 or more should read it. He is opinionated, with left-wing but often reactionary views. His account of the social changes in Britain over the last fifty years is perceptive and informative. (Some of the ground in the Beyond the Fringe etc reminiscences is covered by Humphrey Carpenter's "Great Silly Grin.") He's very humble and self effacing (but manages, in the nicest most modest way, to drop in stuff about his Oxford scholarship and first class degree, and being offered a knighthood, and how the Prince of Wales liked his play). At the end I felt quite brash and materialistic and arrogant.

Alan Bennett has had a wonderful life. Educated at Oxford as a scholarship boy,he became a medieval scholar, a part of a leading Broadway revue," Beyond the Fringe," an actor, world class playwright and author, He mixes with the rich and famous and yet he is full of insecurities, shy, uncertain about his sexuality , worried about his late maturity,and even questions his talent. The book is stories from different stages of his life written with painful frankness and such humour that you laugh out loud, and yet you wonder about a man who always takes sandwiches on trips, and travels economy class, when he can own a million pound home in London. He seems haunted by his childhood in working class Yorkshire and he brings his Mam and Dad and the rest of the family to life just as much as the more famous names of his adult days. Mr Bennett is never boring never dull. It is hard to put this book down.