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Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is 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 full-time, his first stage play Forty Years On being produced in 1968.
His work includes The Madness of George III and its film adaptation, the series of monologues Talking Heads, the play and subsequent film The History Boys, and popular audio books, including his readings of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Winnie-the-Pooh.
Bennett was born in Armley in Leeds. The son of a co-op butcher, Walter, and his wife Lilian Mary (née Peel), Bennett attended Christ Church, Upper Armley, Church of England School (in the same class as Barbara Taylor Bradford), and then Leeds Modern School (now Lawnswood School), learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists during his national service and gained a place at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. However, having spent time in Cambridge during national service, and partly wishing to follow the object of his unrequited love, he decided to apply for a scholarship at Oxford University. He was accepted by Exeter College, Oxford, from which he graduated with a first-class degree in history. While at Oxford he performed comedy with a number of eventually successful actors in the Oxford Revue. He was to remain at the university for several years, where he researched and taught Medieval History, before deciding he was not cut out to be an academic.
In August 1960 Bennett, along with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook, achieved instant fame by appearing at the Edinburgh Festival in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe. After the festival, the show continued in London and New York. He also appeared in My Father Knew Lloyd George. His highly regarded television comedy sketch series On the Margin (1966) was unfortunately erased; the BBC re-used expensive videotape rather than keep it in the archives. However, in 2014 it was announced that copies of the entire series had been found.
Around this time Bennett often found himself playing vicars and claims that as an adolescent he assumed he would grow up to be a Church of England clergyman, for no better reason than that he looked like one.
Bennett's first stage play Forty Years On, directed by Patrick Garland, was produced in 1968. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose, and broadcasting and many appearances as an actor.
Bennett's distinctive, expressive voice (which bears a strong Leeds accent) and the sharp humour and evident humanity of his writing have made his readings of his work very popular, especially the autobiographical writings. Bennett's readings of the Winnie the Pooh stories are also widely enjoyed.
Many of Bennett's characters are unfortunate and downtrodden. Life has brought them to an impasse or else passed them by. In many cases they have met with disappointment in the realm of sex and intimate relationships, largely through tentativeness and a failure to connect with others.
Despite a long history with both the National Theatre and the BBC - Bennett never writes on commission, declaring "I don't work on commission, I just do it on spec. If people don't want it then it's too bad."
Bennett is both unsparing and compassionate in laying bare his characters' frailties. This can be seen in his television plays for LWT from the early 1970s through to his work for the BBC in the early 1980s. His many works for television include his first play for the medium, A Day Out in 1972, A Little Outing in 1977, Intensive Care in 1982, An Englishman Abroad in 1983, and A Question for Attribution in 1991. But his perhaps most famous screen work is the 1987 Talking Heads series of monologues for television which were later performed at the Comedy Theatre in London in 1992. This was a sextet of poignantly comic pieces, each depicting several stages in the character's decline from an initial state of denial or ignorance of their predicament, through a slow realisation of the hopelessness of their situation, progressing to a bleak or ambiguous conclusion. A second set of six Talking Heads followed a decade later, which was darker and more disturbing.
In his 2005 prose collection Untold Stories Bennett has written candidly and movingly of the mental illness that his mother and other family members suffered. Much of his work draws on his Leeds background and while he is celebrated for his acute observations of a particular type of northern speech ("It'll take more than Dairy Box to banish memories of Pearl Harbour" , the range and daring of his work is often undervalued. His television play The Old Crowd includes shots of the director and technical crew, while his stage play The Lady in the Van includes two characters named Alan Bennett.
The Lady in the Van was based on his experiences with a tramp called Miss Shepherd, who lived on Bennett's driveway in several dilapidated vans for more than fifteen years. A radio play of the same title was broadcast on 21 February 2009 on BBC Radio 4, with actress Maggie Smith reprising her role of Miss Shepherd and Alan Bennett playing himself. The work has also been published in book form. Alan Bennett adapted The Lady in the Van for the stage.
Bennett adapted his 1991 play The Madness of George III for the cinema. Entitled The Madness of King George (1994), the film received four Academy Award nominations: for Bennett's writing and the performances of Nigel Hawthorne and Helen Mirren. It won the award for best art direction.
Bennett's critically acclaimed The History Boys won three Laurence Olivier Awards in 2005, for Best New Play, Best Actor (Richard Griffiths), and Best Direction (Nicholas Hytner), having previously won Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and Evening Standard Awards for Best Actor and Best Play. Bennett also received the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Theatre. The History Boys won six Tony Awards on Broadway, including best play, best performance by a leading actor in a play (Richard Griffiths), best performance by a featured actress in a play (Frances de la Tour), and best direction of a play (Nicholas Hytner). A film version of The History Boys was released in the UK in October 2006.
Bennett wrote the play Enjoy in 1980. It was one of the rare flops in his career and barely scraped a run of seven weeks at the Vaudeville Theatre, in spite of the stellar cast of Joan Plowright, Colin Blakely, Susan Littler, Philip Sayer, Liz Smith (who replaced Joan Hickson during rehearsals) and, in his first West End role, Marc Sinden. It was directed by Ronald Eyre. A new production of Enjoy attracted very favourable notices during its 2008 UK tour and moved to the West End of London in January 2009. The West End show took over £1m in advance ticket sales and even extended the run to cope with demand. The production starred Alison Steadman, David Troughton, Richard Glaves, Carol Macready and Josie Walker.
At the National Theatre in late 2009 Nicholas Hytner directed Bennett's play The Habit of Art, about the relationship between the poet W.H. Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten.
Bennett's new play People opened at the National Theatre in October 2012.
In September 2005, Bennett revealed that, in 1997, he had undergone treatment for cancer, and described the illness as a "bore". His chances of survival were given as being "much less" than 50%. He began Untold Stories (published 2005) thinking it would be published posthumously, but his cancer went into remission. In the autobiographical sketches which form a large part of the book Bennett writes openly for the first time about his homosexuality (Bennett has had relationships with women as well, although this is only touched upon in Untold Stories). Previously Bennett had referred to questions about his sexuality as like asking a man who has just crawled across the Sahara desert to choose between Perrier or Malvern mineral water.
Bennett lives in Camden Town in London, and shares his home with Rupert Thomas, the editor of World of Interiors magazine. Bennett also had a long-term relationship with his former housekeeper, Anne Davies, until her death in 2009.
In 2010, Bennett described how he was mugged by two women who surreptitiously squirted him with ice cream in Marks & Spencer, Camden Town. As they purported to wipe off the confection with tissues, the robbers stole £1,500 cash he had withdrawn from the bank minutes earlier. Bennett, who initially was grateful the women had helped clean him, said the experience afterwards made him 'less likely to believe in the kindness of strangers'.
Bennett is a lapsed Anglican; raised in the church, he became very religious as a teenager, but has "slowly left it [The Church] over the years," though he still holds a faith, and is often supportive of the restoration of churches through Britain.
More information:
Code:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/11781.Alan_Bennett |
Books
Alan Bennett - The Uncommon Reader (read by Alan Bennett)
Alan Bennett - Smut (read by Alan Bennett)
Alan Bennett - The Clothes They Stood Up In (read by Alan Bennett)
Alan Bennett - Talking Heads (read by Alan Bennett, Others)
Alan Bennett - Untold Stories (read by Alan Bennett)
Alan Bennett - The Laying On Of Hands (read by Alan Bennett)
Alan Bennett - Father! Father! Burning Bright (read by Alan Bennett)
Alan Bennett - The Lady In The Van (read by Alan Bennett)
Alan Bennett - Telling Tales (read by Alan Bennett)
Alan Bennett - Diaries 1980-1990 (read by Alan Bennett)
Alan Bennett - Alan Bennett Reads Childhood Classics (read by Alan Bennett)
BBC
Alan Bennett - An Englishman Abroad (BBC)
Alan Bennett - Forty Years On (BBC)
Alan Bennett - Kafka's D*ick (BBC)
Alan Bennett - The History Boys (BBC)
Code:
Bookshttp://rapidgator.net/file/987e549354037bd76c562a4ba50275e2/The_Uncommon_Reader.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/43e0135528a71482d09f91e681d4a4d5/Smut.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/e292ae2fea5ce8c2c1305073a7772a7f/The_Clothes_They_Stood_Up_In.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/0802ab963e530e9104ed12742cfe86f0/Talking_Heads.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/799fb97191e6cc97273240f4dabefa8b/Untold_Stories.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/f427dee53cc0402ddb21602f629fec1e/The_Laying_On_Of_Hands.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/a5d405b16af62f3fd859dae945573b5e/Father_Father_Burning_Bright.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/e23bbd3595dd3a0abc6b221d2cd16a10/The_Lady_In_The_Van.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/70a6d64361e6187ce7813b74b100b77d/Telling_Tales.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/f9f305bcc49da91c8e12624476526d62/Diaries_1980_1990.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/b22e4b041f7f47bf36cc213e43e534a4/Alan_Bennett_Reads_Childhood_Classics.rar.html
BBC
http://rapidgator.net/file/a91b95c08097a53f6bc1e29413b269da/An_Englishman_Abroad.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/83f6f864c67b5618e59fb6db50605a7d/Forty_Years_On.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/0a589e61041d45b7415f943a2763124e/Kafkas_Dick.rar.html
http://rapidgator.net/file/ca280082c6054c2238ba3b3e4b70ed5e/The_History_Boys.rar.html |
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