Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennettis an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. He was born in Leeds and attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with the Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research medieval history at the university for several years. His collaboration as writer and performer with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival brought him instant fame. He gave up academia, and turned to writing...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth9 May 1934
I don't talk very well. With writing, you've time to get it right. Also I've found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn't write no one would want me to talk anyway.
Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours
Papers like the Mail make out that people are prurient and outraged; I don't think people really care.
He says some things which are taken as gospel, when they ought to be disputed. When he writes 'Courage is no good / It means not scaring others', you want to say that just isn't true. There is more to courage than that.
That's a great benefit. After we chose the cast, we educated them into the play. We taught them. One of the blessings of being at the National Theatre is that you have a very long rehearsal time.
Hey, this is exciting. At least we'll always remember this anniversary.
He's so eccentric -- physically, and he's so funny.
If you told it the other way round in a film, it would seem like a tract, ... The message would be too much in the foreground. It's human stories, those are the ones you're interested in. So the argument, as it were, is submerged and that's the way it should be, really. You've got to get the audience interested in the lives of the boys.