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
At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, 'I am Mrs de Winter now!
God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, "Can I be excused the Crucifixion?" No!
To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it's on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.
... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate. That's always been my philosophy.
Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date? Of course they're out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin
History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
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
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.
that interest comes from my partner Rupert. But I used to do it when I was young and a lot of that fed into The History Boys.
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.
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.