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
A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.
A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.
If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.
My experience came before most of you were born. My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn't normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge. But the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge. So, half a dozen of us tried - not all of us in history - and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.
Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.
The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.
Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.