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
No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.
Polly: Education with socialists, it's like sex, all right as long as you don't have to pay for it.
It [Cambridge] wasn't a holy grail in the sense that I'd never been to Cambridge. But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.
It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
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!
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!
Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.
It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.' To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: 'This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.