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Alan Bennett: Diaries

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Alan Bennett: Diaries

By: Alan Bennett
Narrated by: Alan Bennett
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About this listen

Classic memoirs from the acclaimed English actor, author, playwright, and screenwriter.

Alan Bennett is one of the country's most celebrated and best-loved authors. This unmissable collection of diaries and memoirs brings together for the first time Telling Tales, Diaries: 1980-1990, the autobiographical section of Untold Stories, which covers the period 1997-2004, and Keeping On Keeping On: The Diaries 2005-2014.

In his earliest collection of diaries, Alan Bennett offers a fascinating insight into his life in the eighties, working on location for his early films and enjoying life at home in Camden. In the diaries of Untold Stories, he enjoys the simple pleasures of nature and wonders about the state of religion and politics at the end of the twentieth century. In Keeping On Keeping On, he looks back at a busy decade that saw him write four highly acclaimed plays, reflects on his life with his partner, Rupert Thomas, and considers his lately found status as 'kindly, cosy and essentially harmless'. Telling Tales, meanwhile, provides ten childhood snapshots and reminiscences about his early years-charting his development from a schoolboy in Leeds to a doubtful agnostic teen, as well as his undergraduate life at the University of Oxford.

With wit, wisdom, sharp social commentary and perceptive impressions, Alan Bennett's memoirs and diaries are a joy to discover, and a delight to hear again. For those who want to listen to Alan Bennett read Untold Stories in its complete form, Alan Bennett: Untold Stories is also available from BBC Audio.

Originally broadcast on Radio 4:
4 June - 15 June 2001 (Telling Tales)
10 October - 14 October 1994 (Diaries 1980-1990)
10 October - 14 October 2005 (Untold Stories)
24 October - 4 November 2016 (Keeping On Keeping On: The Diaries, 2005-2014)

Production credits
Read by Alan Bennett

Music by George Fenton
Produced by Liz Allard (Telling Tales)

Abridged by Pat McLoughlin
Produced by Gillian Hush (Diaries 1980-1990)

Abridged and produced by Gordon House (Untold Stories)

Abridged and produced by Gordon House (Keeping On Keeping On: The Diaries, 2005-2014)

©2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd Art & Literature Authors Biographies & Memoirs Diaries & Journals Literature & Fiction Memoirs, Diaries & Correspondence

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All stars
Most relevant  
Unbelievably predictable. Alan Bennett puts into words just how prescient he is about most things.

Prescient

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Just loved it. He writes so well with an eye for minutiae, gently poking fun but never maliciously. It works very well as an audio book because no matter where you pick up and leave off or forget where you were when you fell asleep (as I do when listening in the night), every section stands alone and stands being heard several times over, like a really good piece of music. Am now going to search for more by him.

Enchanting and wickedly observant

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Love Alan B, mostly for his Northern niceties and this lived up to expectations.
spoiler alert; as you might expect in an autobiography by an older chap, an old person dies in every chapter.

nice

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An enjoyable meander through Alan Bennett's diaries, read by Alan himself, Not sure I agreed with some of his left wing views but nonetheless they were very entertaining.

What's not to Like.

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Absolutely loved listening to Alan telling his diaries notes he’s got such a dry humour and tells it how it is

Brilliant

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Alan Bennett has the ability to describe quite ordinary things in a way that is truly entertaining. But these diaries are not just ordinary events there are some fascinating personal accounts of an interesting life. I enjoyed everything about this book and my only regret is that it is over.

Simply Brilliant

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Time has altered my view of these diaries.
I read all these diaries on their initial publication/s. Ive loved all of Bennetts works and his diaries, and enjoyed his comments, insights and jokes about his world and ours.
But this time round i was struck by how repetitive his political comments are through the years, not because he holds to any recognized political ideology, but suggesting experience hasn’t taught him much.
He remains inured to some of the vicious reality of experience of ‘the poor’ (as he would have it in his victorian fashion) preferring to see them either as the great uneducated (unwashed), or as the great ‘hard done by’… rarely wondering why they don’t always empathize with the criminals and the takers of society as he suggests he does.
I hesitate to label him naive because he is clearly well informed, and observation is after all his stock in trade. But one does sense he would easily have been fodder for the KGB in a slightly earlier era, swallowing the ‘imperialist bullies’ line and ‘we are for the people’ nonsense of the USSR. I am sure he would have been a ‘Cambridge Spy’.
That he seems still to regard every country, culture and political system as better than ours, in the face of all contrary evidence from those who experience these systems first hand is depressing and undermines his legitimate observations on our many failings.
After a series of anti-police rants (based on very little actual knowledge of incident) he is startled by his own experience of a decent, engaged, empathetic police officer. That he acknowledges his apparent prejudice here is in his favour, that he should get so far in life and with all his education and skills and yet retain these silly prejudices, when he so often rightly identifies and ridicules such unwarranted perspectives in others is a bit sad.
Im afraid i also found his constant negativity rather repetitive, maybe its me. I have matured and maintain a more positive outlook than i did as a youth. At least a more sanguine one. Dear Allan, you are a great playwright and a man of letters whose insights have brought us a great deal to chew on as it were, but i do feel inclined to say ‘cheer up, it might never happen’.

Time has altered my view of these diaries

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