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
But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten. They may not have two spondees to rub together but they still want to pen their saga untrammelled by life-threatening activities like trailing round Sainsbury's, emptying the dishwasher or going to the nativity play.
Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, 'I am Mrs de Winter now!
I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, "Can I be excused the Crucifixion?" No!
You always know when you're going to arrive. If you go by car, you don't. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.
[talking about the Holocaust] 'But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.' 'But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be... even on the Holocaust.
It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.
Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.
I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.