House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries

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March, Yorkshire. We vary our evening stroll, which in my case is more of a trudge, by going up the village to the church to sit in the churchyard. The birds are noisy, rooks and crows mostly, though unlike London no seagulls. And here come the bellringers for their Monday night practice, and quite frail they look too. The key is lost, so the ringers are very happy to chat and gossip while it’s located. Someone with Ukrainian relatives is taking in a family and there has been a dance and coffee morning in aid. Now the church is found to be open so no key is required, the ringers go up the tower as we walk home, and as we are putting the key in our own door the bells start. Bought today and have no idea when this was published but it feels just like sitting with Alan Bennett for a chat. Never seen this before and within an hour I have found another delight in his writing. March. With Rupert now working from home my life is much easier, as I get regular cups of tea and a lovely hot lunch. There is something about this early lesson in the danger that other people pose that contributes to the impression Alan Bennett always gives of having been primed for apartness. He recounts a telling anecdote from 1941 in which the whole family went on a Sunday fishing expedition in the country. Bennett and his brother wore their school caps, his mother her swagger coat, and his father the suit with the good trousers. Having failed to catch anything – were they even in the right place? – the unlikely sportsmen take themselves stoically home. “We never joined in, got the gear, looked the part,” recalls Bennett and it is clear that he is thinking of more than just fishing. It was a smash hit, with every night the audience studded with celebrities, and accordingly at one performance there was the queen. My particular tour de force in the second half was an Anglican sermon, which always went well. Less successful, earlier in the show, was a monologue – stand-up it would be called today – on the subject of corporal and capital punishment, both in those days still going strong. Young enough then to believe that theatre and indeed satire could do some good, I was proud of this piece, though it garnered few laughs and was referred to by the rest of the cast as ‘the boring old man sketch’. The character I played was vehement in his defence of corporal and capital punishment while strongly rebutting any suggestion that the thought of either gave him pleasure. ‘On the contrary,’ I intoned. ‘They produce no erec … no REACTION at all.’ They didn’t produce much of a reaction from the audience either, and on the night the queen was present none at all. To be fair, the management had urged me to tone down the offending sketch, particularly the erection/reaction gag but (rather self-righteously) I refused. There wasn’t much laughter that night in the rest of the show, which normally went by in gales of hilarity, but with the audience only concerned with what the Royal Party was thinking, much of it passed in awkward silence.

Alan Bennett | Stage | The Guardian Alan Bennett | Stage | The Guardian

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Thanks to arthritis I’m now much less mobile than I was. Gone are the days when I could jump on my bike to pop down to the shops, so static semi-isolation is scarcely a hardship or even a disruption of my routine. Himself no slouch when it came to work, George Steiner once asked a Soviet dissident how he got through so much. “House arrest, Steiner. House arrest.” Alas, so far as work is concerned, I haven’t yet noticed much difference. There is a valedictory feel to these final entries. Rupert no longer edits The World of Interiors, so perhaps they will give up London and stay in Yorkshire? But as long as Bennett keeps writing, it doesn’t really matter. This is a mere fragment, but still precious. In 2006 I had the notion of what upset it would cause should the queen ever become an avid reader. A long short story, ‘The Uncommon Reader’ too was a pleasure to write. * The queen, dry, quizzical and absolved from any desire to be liked, is a gift to an author and the reader throughout is on her side. Had it been Elizabeth I it might have been a celebratory masque, as Her Majesty comes well out of every encounter, besting her ministers, her courtiers and even her devoted subjects. For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions. I don’t think Her Majesty ever came to any other of my plays, though not, I’m sure, due to my youthful bêtise. Still, when I next wrote about the queen it might also have caused offence. This was A Question of Attribution, put on at the National Theatre in 1988 and the first time the queen had been represented on the stage. This needs to be said. Prunella Scales’s seamless portrayal of Her Majesty not only preceded, it also surpassed any that came after. Physically much the same as HMQ, Pru had no claim or aspirations to glamour, she even had a touch of the suburban. The sad thing is that only the National Theatre audiences saw and were stunned by this performance. Though John Schlesinger later filmed the play (where HMQ was supported by her corgis) the magic didn’t quite transfer. But Pru was the first and the best. In the central scene of the play the queen has a long conversation with the keeper of the royal pictures, Sir Anthony Blunt. He is a longtime Soviet agent and one of the questions implicit in the scene is whether the queen knows this.

‘He manages to make me look like a blond Hitler’: Alan

The scene in question was a pleasure to write. It brought home to me that HMQ (as she was billed in the programme) was a person like no other, a woman who has been everywhere, met everyone and to whom nothing comes as a surprise. At one point Blunt mentions Venice: Fiona Gell’s ‘Spring Tides: A Story from a Small Island’ is a passionate, moving account of the transformative power of the sea and the importance of protecting it for the future generations The most one can hope from a reader is that he or she should think: “Here is somebody who knows what it is like to be me.” It’s not what EM Forster meant by “only connect”, but it’s what I mean.September. I must be one of the very few of the late queen’s subjects to have said – or almost said – the word ‘erection’ in her presence. It was in 1961 in London’s Fortune Theatre where I was appearing with my colleagues and co-writers Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore in Beyond the Fringe.

House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries by Alan Bennett review

So hot that even the gulls have fallen silent. At 92A (Dad’s butcher’s shop in Otley Road in Headingley) he had an antiquated fridge which ran on a fan belt. In hot weather the belt overheated, just at the time when, should the fridge break down, bankruptcy threatened. With the fridge full of turkeys, Christmas was another perilous period.UK: Rishi Sunak hosts talks with Kamala Harris, vice-president of the US, at No 10, followed by a private dinner; Harris also delivers a policy speech on the future of AI at the US embassy in London; Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, speaks at the annual conference of the King’s Fund, a health think tank; start of Movember, the moustache-growing charity event held during November each year to raise funds and awareness for men’s health. Condition: Very Good. Ships from the UK. Used book that is in excellent condition. May show signs of wear or have minor defects. The bulk of this witty and thoughtful tome invites us to enter the mind of a now largely immobile mental butterfly. With Rupert now working from home my life is much easier, as I get regular cups of tea and a lovely hot lunch. One of the pleasures and indeed consolations of a memorial service is in looking round to see who’s there, not something that’s possible on Zoom. So, ideally it should be a roving Zoom. Not, I’m sure, that Geoffrey would have thought he was worth the trouble.

House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries by Alan Bennett | Goodreads House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries by Alan Bennett | Goodreads

An abiding memory for me is his engaging encounter with a leaf sweeper which puts a smile on AB’s face for the rest of the day. His one regret: he’d forgotten to put his hearing aid in! Although he refused the former honour 25 years ago, given the quality of many recent elevations to the peerage including one bemoaned in this book, the House of Lords could certainly benefit from both his wit and wisdom.

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