Alan Bennett

Bennett dramatizes as two characters his almost constitutional ambivalence — Alan Bennett, the participant in the Miss Shepherd saga, and Alan Bennett 2, the writer and observer. The London critics were also of two minds in their ...

Author: Joseph O'Mealy

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781135697693

Category: Performing Arts

Page: 192

View: 855

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Alan Bennett is perhaps best known in the UK for the BBC production of his Talking Heads TV plays, while the rest of the world may recognize him for the film adaptation of his play, The Madness of King George. O'Mealy points out that Bennett is a social critic strongly influenced by Beckett and Swift, interested in depicting and analyzing the role playing of everyday life, a'la sociologist Ervin Goffman.
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Understanding Alan Bennett

TRACKING THE FRINGE of security that Bennett overturns . In fact , his greatest shock comes near the end , in the revelation that the ugliness he has been describing stems from a nuclear family . No bulwark against cruelty , the tatty ...

Author: Peter Wolfe

Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press

ISBN: 1570032807

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 255

View: 255

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Of this now legendary troupe Bennett had the most dubious professional future in the mid-1960s. Yet in January 1992 this theatrical genius had two plays running in London's West End and had recently acted in one of his own teleplays. His suite of monologues, Talking Heads, was also opening in London's Comedy Theatre.
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Writing Home

Already a bestseller, this is a wonderfully entertaining collection of Alan Bennett's prose writings.

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher: Faber & Faber

ISBN: 9780571246878

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 656

View: 520

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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. 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.
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Alan Bennett Plays 2

Kafka's Dick; Insurance Man; Old Country; Englishman Abroad; Question of Attribution Alan Bennett. Copyright This collection first published in 1998 by Faber and Faber Limited Bloomsbury House 74-77 Great Russell Street London were 3DA ...

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher: Faber & Faber

ISBN: 9780571250714

Category: Drama

Page: 368

View: 794

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This second volume of plays by Alan Bennett includes his two Kafka plays, one an hilarious comedy, the other a profound and searching drama. Also included is An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution. The fascination of these two plays lies in the way they question our accepted notions of treachery and, in different ways, make a sympathetic case for Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt.
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Alan Bennett Plays 1

Forty Years On, Getting On, Habeas Corpus and Enjoy Alan Bennett. FABER CONTEMPORARY CLASSICS The Faber contemporary Classics series aims to provide a body of work, in collected form, for all the Faber playwrights. April de Angelis Alan ...

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher: Faber & Faber

ISBN: 9780571246861

Category: Drama

Page: 336

View: 327

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This collection of Alan Bennett's work includes his first play and West End hit, Forty Years On, as well as Getting On, Habeus Corpus, and Enjoy. Forty Years On 'Alan Bennett's most gloriously funny play ... a brilliant, youthful perception of a nation in decline, as seen through the eyes of a home-grown school play ... a classic.' Daily Mail Getting On Winner of the Evening Standard Best Comedy Award in 1971, Getting on is an account of a middle-aged Labour MP, so self-absorbed that he remains blind to the fact that his wife is having an affair with the handyman, his mother-in-law in dying, his son is getting ready to leave home, his best friend thinks him a fool and that to everyone who comes into contact with him he is a self-esteeming joke. Habeus Corpus 'After two elegiac comedies about the decline of old England, Mr Bennett has now written a gorgeously vulgar but densely plotted facre that is a downright celebration of sex and the human body ... a combination of hurtling action with verbal brilliance.' Guardian Enjoy Enjoy uncannily foresaw the attitudes to English working-class life now enshrined in themeparks. 'The classic tug in Bennett between childhod Yorkshire and intellectual sophistication has never been better, or more daringly expressed.' Observer
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The Complete Talking Heads

Alan Bennett's award-winning series of solo pieces is a classic of contemporary drama, universally hailed for its combination of razor-sharp wit and deeply felt humanity.

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher: Picador

ISBN: 9781429901048

Category: Fiction

Page: 208

View: 128

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Alan Bennett's award-winning series of solo pieces is a classic of contemporary drama, universally hailed for its combination of razor-sharp wit and deeply felt humanity. In Bed Among the Lentils, a vicar's wife discovers a semblance of happiness with an Indian shop owner. In A Chip in the Sugar, a man's life begins to unravel when he discovers his aging mother has rekindled an old flame. In A Lady of Letters, a busybody pays a price for interfering in her neighbor's life. First produced for BBC television in 1988 to great critical acclaim, the Talking Heads monologues also appeared on the West End Stage in London in 1992 and 1998. In 2002, seven of the pieces were performed at the Tiffany Theater in Los Angeles for a highly praised brief engagement, and in 2003 a selection of the monologues premiered in New York at the Minetta Lane Theatre. These extraordinary portraits of ordinary people confirm Alan Bennett's place as one of the most gifted, versatile, and important writers in the English Language.
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Talking Heads

Theebook edition of Alan Bennett's celebrated monologues 'Alan Bennett's Talking Heads is pretty much the best thing ever.

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher: Faber & Faber

ISBN: 9780571365395

Category: Performing Arts

Page: 272

View: 676

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Theebook edition of Alan Bennett's celebrated monologues 'Alan Bennett's Talking Heads is pretty much the best thing ever.' David Sedaris Alan Bennett sealed his reputation as the master of observation with Talking Heads, a series of twelve groundbreaking monologues, originally filmed for BBC Television, starring Patricia Routledge, Thora Hird, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters, Stephanie Cole, Eileen Atkins, David Haig, Penelope Wilton and Alan Bennett himself. Uplifting, deeply moving, full of humanity and wit, they remain essential, glorious reading.
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Allelujah

Alan Bennett's Allelujah! opened at the Bridge Theatre, London, in July 2018. With an introduction by Alan Bennett.

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher: Faber & Faber

ISBN: 9780571349869

Category: Drama

Page: 96

View: 831

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- What were you in life? - In life, as you put it, I was a schoolmaster. The Beth, an old fashioned cradle-to-grave hospital serving a town on the edge of the Pennines, is threatened with closure as part of an NHS efficiency drive. As Dr Valentine and Sister Gilchrist attend to the patients, a documentary crew, eager to capture its fight for survival, follows the daily struggle to find beds on the Dusty Springfield Geriatric Ward. Meanwhile, the old people's choir, in readiness for next week's concert, is in full swing, augmented by the arrival of Mrs Maudsley, aka Pudsey Nightingale. Alan Bennett's Allelujah! opened at the Bridge Theatre, London, in July 2018. With an introduction by Alan Bennett.
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Six Poets Hardy to Larkin

Ranging from hidden treasures to famous poems, this is a collection for the beginner and the expert alike.

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher: Faber & Faber

ISBN: 9780571321841

Category: Poetry

Page: 192

View: 226

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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.
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Four Stories

Like everything Bennett does, these stories are playful, witty and painfully observant of ordinary people's foibles.

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher: Profile Books

ISBN: 9781847653871

Category: Fiction

Page: 282

View: 380

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Like everything Bennett does, these stories are playful, witty and painfully observant of ordinary people's foibles. They all have brilliant twists, are immensely entertaining and highly moral. And all are modern classics. The Laying on of Hands The painfully observant account of a memorial service for a masseur to the famous. The Clothes They Stood Up In The comic tale of an elderly couple's trials after their flat is stripped completely bare. Father! Father! Burning Bright The savage satire on the family of a dying man who rules over them from his hospital bed. The Lady in the Van The true story of the eccentric old woman who is invited to live in a homeowner's front garden. She stays there, in her van, for fifteen years. The home is Alan Bennett's. It became a West End hit, starring Maggie Smith.
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Alan Bennett

The first book written on Alan Bennett's work for television, including his plays, series, documentaries and biographical pieces.

Author: Kara McKechnie

Publisher:

ISBN: STANFORD:36105124042354

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 216

View: 489

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The first book written on Alan Bennett's work for television, including his plays, series, documentaries and biographical pieces.
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Two Besides

The book contains a substantial preface by Nicholas Hytner and an introduction to each, by Alan Bennett.

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher: Faber & Faber

ISBN: 9780571365876

Category: Performing Arts

Page: 96

View: 520

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** Ebook available for pre-order now -- released 8 July 2020 ** Two brand-new monologues in the Talking Heads series, as seen on BBC1 and iPlayer 'Given the opportunity to revisit the characters from Talking Heads I've added a couple more, both of them ordinary women whom life takes by surprise. They just about end up on top and go on, but without quite knowing how. Still, they're in good company, and at least they've made it into print.' Alan Bennett's twelve Talking Heads are acknowledged masterworks by one of our most highly acclaimed writers. Some thirty years after the original six, Bennett has written Two Besides, a pair of monologues. Each, in its way, is a devastating portrait of grief. In An Ordinary Woman, a mother suffers the inevitable consequences when she makes life intolerable for herself and her family by falling for her own flesh and blood; while The Shrine tells the story behind a makeshift roadside shrine, introducing us to Lorna, bearing witness in her high-vis jacket, the bereft partner of a dedicated biker with a surprising private life. The two new Talking Heads were recorded for the BBC during the exceptional circumstances of coronavirus lockdown in the spring of 2020, directed by Nicholas Hytner and performed by Sarah Lancashire and Monica Dolan. The book contains a substantial preface by Nicholas Hytner and an introduction to each, by Alan Bennett.
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The Lady in the Van

Adapted by the author from his autobiographical memoir, The Lady in the Van tells the story of Miss Mary Shepherd, whom Alan Bennett first came across when she was living in the street near his home in Camden Town.

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher: Faber & Faber

ISBN: 9780571250752

Category: Drama

Page: 96

View: 592

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Adapted by the author from his autobiographical memoir, The Lady in the Van tells the story of Miss Mary Shepherd, whom Alan Bennett first came across when she was living in the street near his home in Camden Town. Taking refuge with her van in his garden originally for three months, she ended up staying fifteen years. Funny, touching and unexpectedly spectacular, The Lady in the Van marked the return to the stage of one of our leading playwrights. The Lady in the Van with Maggie Smith opened at the Queen's Theatre, London, in December 1999.
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People

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?

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher:

ISBN: 0571309801

Category: English drama

Page: 96

View: 827

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A richly enjoyable play by one of the nation's finest writers.
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The Habit of Art

You are a rent boy. I am a poet. Over the wall lives the Dean of Christ Church. We all have our parts to play. Alan Bennett's new play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music.

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher: Faber & Faber

ISBN: 9780571255627

Category: Drama

Page: 96

View: 960

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Auden often said that metre and rhyme led him down unexpected paths to thoughts he wouldn't otherwise have had, and in this respect versification and fornication are not so different. 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 for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by amongst others their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. You are a rent boy. I am a poet. Over the wall lives the Dean of Christ Church. We all have our parts to play. Alan Bennett's new play is as much about the theatre 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. 'In the end,' said Auden, 'art is small beer. The really serious things in life are earning one's living and loving one's neighbour.'
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Untold Stories

'Perhaps the best loved of English writers alive today.' Sunday Telegraph Untold Stories is published jointly with Profile Books.

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher: Faber & Faber

ISBN: 9780571246892

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 672

View: 672

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Alan Bennett's first collection of prose since Writing Home takes in all his major writings over the last ten years. The title piece is a poignant family memoir with an account of the marriage of his parents, the lives and deaths of his aunts and the uncovering of a long-held family secret. Bennett, as always, is both amusing and poignant, whether he's discussing his modest childhood or his work with the likes of Maggie Smith, Thora Hird and John Gielgud. Also included are his much celebrated diaries for the years 1996 to 2004. At times heartrending and at others extremely funny,Untold Stories is a matchless and unforgettable anthology. Since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s Alan Bennett has delighted audiences worldwide with his gentle humour and wry observations about life. His many works include Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, Talking Heads, A Question of Attribution and The Madness of King George. The History Boys opened to great acclaim at the National in 2004, and is winner of the Evening Standard Award, the South Bank Award and the Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play. 'Perhaps the best loved of English writers alive today.' Sunday Telegraph Untold Stories is published jointly with Profile Books.
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The Uncommon Reader

The Queen of England comes across a travelling library and ends up taking out a novel. One read leads to another and a passion awakes, resulting in a decline of her public duties.

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher:

ISBN: UOM:39015070739563

Category: Bookmobiles

Page: 124

View: 458

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The Queen of England comes across a travelling library and ends up taking out a novel. One read leads to another and a passion awakes, resulting in a decline of her public duties.
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The Clothes They Stood Up In

The Clothes They Stood Up In is Alan Bennett's first story.

Author: Alan Bennett

Publisher: Profile Books

ISBN: 9781782831525

Category: Fiction

Page: 90

View: 369

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The Clothes They Stood Up In is Alan Bennett's first story. Like Charles Dickens' novels which were first published in magazines, it originally appeared in the London Review of Books - which the author says 'seems to me (and not just because I occasionally contribute to it) the liveliest, most serious and also the most radical literary periodical we have'.
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Point of View in Plays

One of the innovative features of the play is its use of two Alan Bennett characters. One of the Alan Bennetts has the function of a narrator, and when the play begins he is sitting at his desk, supposedly in the process of writing the ...

Author: Dan McIntyre

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

ISBN: 9789027233356

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 203

View: 774

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This is the first book-length study of how point of view is manifested linguistically in dramatic texts. It examines such issues as how readers process the shifts in viewpoint that can occur within such texts. Using insights from cognitive linguistics, the book aims to explain how the analysis of point of view in drama can be undertaken, and how this is fruitful for understanding textual and discoursal effects in this genre. Following on from a consideration of existing frameworks for the analysis of point of view, a cognitive approach to deixis is suggested as being particularly profitable for explaining the viewpoint effects that can arise in dramatic texts. To expand on the large number of examples discussed throughout the book, the penultimate chapter consists of an extended analysis of a single play. This book is relevant to scholars in a range of areas, including linguistics, literary studies and cognitive science.
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