Keeping On Keeping On
by Alan Bennett
Allen & Unwin
This is the third volume of diaries from actor, author, playwright, screenwriter Alan Bennett. Writing Home (1994) detailed his life between 1980 and 1990 and Untold Stories (2005) covered 1996 to 2004. Now 82, this volume contains excerpts from diary entries and various scribbling between 2005 and 2015.
It was a decade when four of his plays premiered at London’s National Theatre. His play The History Boys was end its run in London and opened in New York as well as becoming a film, and his play The Lady in the Van was being filmed in his old apartment. Despite his age, he has many working and social .engagements
Bennett had a civil ceremony with his partner Rupert Thomas who is thirty years younger than him and edits World of Interiors magazine. They are always driving to small villages to explore antique shops or discover obscure churches, taking their sandwiches to enjoy a picnic in the country along the way and sometimes picking mushrooms or blackberries.
Comments on politics of the day, newspaper articles and television programs are interspersed with memories from his childhood in the war and his time at Oxford. He lunches with famous people and jets off to Rome, France or New York regularly but still finds time to sit in cafes and get ideas for his plays.
Of course many of his friends die over this period and he attends numerous funerals and sometimes gives memorial speeches. Bennet shares thoughts about being robbed in M&S, his weakening bladder and the ongoing battle with his barber to trim his eyebrows. It’s like catching up with an old friend and having a very long (700p page) chat.
The book includes Denmark Hill, a darkly comic radio play set in South London, a film diary for The History Boys, a speech to save local libraries, a sermon on private education given at King’s College, Cambridge, and several other ramblings.
Lezly Herbert
