Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English playwright, author, actor and screenwriter. He has received numerous awards and honours including four BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Tony Awards. In 2005, he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award.
Bennett was born in Leeds and attended Oxford University. He taught medieval history at the university for several years. His work in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival brought him instant fame and later a Special Tony Award. He turned to writing full time and gained acclaim with his plays at the Royal National Theatre. The following plays were adapted into films: The Madness of King George (1994), The History Boys (2006), and The Lady in the Van (2015).
Early life
Bennett was born on 9 May 1934 in
Armley,
Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire.
The younger 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). He has an older brother, Gordon, who is exactly three years older than him. Gordon is a retired airline pilot..
Bennett learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists (JSSL) during his national service before applying for a scholarship at Oxford University. He was accepted by Exeter College, Oxford, and 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 remained at the university for several years, working as a junior lecturer of Medieval History at Magdalen College,
Career
Early career
In August 1960, Bennett – along with
Dudley Moore,
Jonathan Miller and
Peter Cook – gained fame after an appearance at the Edinburgh Festival in the satirical revue
Beyond the Fringe, with the show continuing in London and New York. He also appeared in
My Father Knew Lloyd George. His television comedy sketch series
On the Margin (1966) was erased; the
BBC re-used expensive videotape rather than keep it in the archives. However, in 2014 it was announced that audio copies of the entire series had been found.
Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, directed by Patrick Garland and starring John Gielgud, was produced in 1968. His second play, Getting On, also directed by Garland and starring Kenneth More, opened in 1971. 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.
Despite a long history with both the National Theatre and the BBC, Bennett never writes on commission, saying "I don't work on commission, I just do it Spec script. If people don't want it then it's too bad."
Bennett's 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 of Attribution in 1991.
1980s
Bennett wrote the play
Enjoy in 1980. It 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.
[Shenton, Mark. "Which flops are ripe for revival?", Theatre Blog, The Guardian, 28 August 2008] 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 more than £1 million in advance ticket sales
[ Curtain re-opens on Bennett Play BBC News, 29 January 2009] and even extended the run to cope with demand.
[ Bennett's Enjoy extends two weeks to 16 May 2009 London Theatre, 18 February 2009] The production starred
Alison Steadman,
David Troughton, Richard Glaves, Carol Macready and
Josie Walker.
1990s
Bennett wrote
The Lady in the Van based on his experiences with an eccentric woman called
Miss Shepherd, who lived on Bennett's driveway in a series of dilapidated vans for more than fifteen years. It was first published in 1989 as an essay in the
London Review of Books. In 1990 he published it in book form. In 1999, he adapted it into a stage play, which starred
Maggie Smith and was directed by
Nicholas Hytner. The stage play includes two characters named Alan Bennett. On 21 February 2009 it was broadcast as a radio play on BBC Radio 4, with Maggie Smith reprising her role and Alan Bennett playing himself. He adapted the story again for a 2015 film, with Maggie Smith reprising her role again, and Nicholas Hytner directing again. In the film
Alex Jennings plays the two versions of Bennett, although Alan Bennett appears in a cameo at the very end of the film.
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.
In 1995, Bennett wrote and hosted the three-part BBC documentary series The Abbey, directed by Jonathan Stedall. The programme provides a personal tribute to, and tour of, Westminster Abbey.
21st century
Bennett's
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.
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.
In 2005, Bennett released his second volume of autobiographical prose Untold Stories, which actor Simon Callow described as "magisterial", saying it offered a "comprehensive insight into a figure who... has become a defining feature of the national landscape".
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.[ Archived version is available without subscription.]
Bennett's play People opened at the National Theatre in October 2012.[ Audio not available.]
In July 2018, Allelujah!, a comic drama by Bennett about a National Health Service hospital threatened with closure, opened at London's Bridge Theatre to critical acclaim.[ "Allelujah!", "Bridge Theatre". Retrieved 25 August 2018]
Personal life
Bennett lived for 40 years on Gloucester Crescent in
Camden Town, London, and in 2006 moved a few minutes' walk away to
Primrose Hill with his partner Rupert Thomas, the former editor of
The World of Interiors magazine.
Bennett also had a long-term relationship with his former housekeeper, Anne Davies, until her death in 2009.
Bennett is an agnostic.
In 1988, Bennett declined the award of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and in 1996 declined a knighthood.[ Playwright who rejected a knighthood says he's probably the last real monarchist left in Britain The Independent, 31 May 2009]
Illness
In September 2005, Bennett revealed that, in 1997, he had undergone treatment for colorectal cancer and described the illness as a "bore". His chances of survival were given as being "much less" than 50 per cent and surgeons had told him they removed a "rock-bun" sized tumour.
[ "Alan Bennett reveals cancer fight", BBC News, 24 September 2005] 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 says of himself "I am homosexual", but also mentions "flings" with women. 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.
[ "Inside Bennett's fridge", The Daily Telegraph, 30 October 2004]
Charity work
In October 2008, Bennett announced that he was donating his entire archive of working papers, unpublished manuscripts, diaries and books to the
Bodleian Library, stating that it was a gesture of thanks repaying a debt he felt he owed to the British welfare state that had given him educational opportunities which his humble family background would otherwise never have afforded.
[Kennedy, Maev "A small way of saying thank you: Bennett donates his life's work to the Bodleian", The Guardian, 24 October 2008]
In September 2015, Bennett endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election.
Following the death of Jonathan Miller in 2019, Bennett became the last surviving member of the original Beyond the Fringe quartet which had also included Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
For many years Bennett has owned a cottage in Clapham in the Yorkshire Dales.
Work
Selected credits
Film
Theatre
Bibliography
Awards and honours
Bennett was made an Honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, in 1987. He was also awarded a D.Litt by the University of Leeds in 1990
[ An evening with Alan Bennett University of Leeds, 29 October 2007] and an honorary doctorate from Kingston University in 1996. In 1998 he refused an honorary doctorate from Oxford University, in protest at its acceptance of funding for a chair from press baron
Rupert Murdoch.
[ "Bennett snubs Oxford over Murdoch chair", BBC News, 15 January 1999] He also declined a
CBE in 1988 and a knighthood in 1996.
He has stated that, although he is not a republican, he would never wish to be knighted, saying it would be a bit like having to wear a suit for the rest of his life.
[ Featured interview: Alan Bennett In Conversation Front Row archive, BBC Radio 4 (Audio, 1 hr)]
In December 2011, Bennett returned to Lawnswood School, nearly 60 years after he left, to unveil the renamed Alan Bennett Library.
In popular culture
-
In the film for television Not Only But Always, about the careers of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Bennett is portrayed by Alan Cox.
-
Along with the other members of Beyond the Fringe, Bennett is portrayed in the play , by Chris Bartlett and Nick Awde.
-
Bennett voices himself in the episode "Brian's Play" of the animated series Family Guy.
-
Bennett was portrayed by Harry Enfield as Stalin, in an episode of "Talking Heads of State", in BBC Two's 2014 satirical Harry and Paul's Story of the Twos.
-
Bennett is portrayed by Reece Dinsdale in a 2014 production of Untold Stories at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.
-
Bennett is portrayed by British actor Alex Jennings in the 2015 comedy-drama film The Lady in the Van. He appears as himself briefly at the end of the film.
-
In the season 2 episode "Mystery Man" of the Netflix show The Crown, Bennett is portrayed by British actor Seb Carrington.
-
In Stewart Lee's 2022 comedy special "Tornado", Bennett appears as himself at the very end. In the appearance, Bennett states that Erving Goffman would have enjoyed the special. This refers to a review of Lee's comedy that Bennett wrote for The London Review of Books in 2017 and acts as a callback to a previous joke in the special.
See also
-
List of British actors
-
List of British playwrights since 1950
-
List of Academy Award winners and nominees from Great Britain
Further reading
-
Peter Wolfe, Understanding Alan Bennett, University of South Carolina Press,
-
-
Joseph H. O'Mealy, Alan Bennett: A Critical Introduction, Routledge, 2001,
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Kara McKechnie, Alan Bennett, The Television Series, Manchester University Press, 2007.
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Robert Hewison, Footlights – A Hundred Years of Cambridge Comedy, Methuen, 1983
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Roger Wilmut, From Fringe to Flying Circus – Celebrating a Unique Generation of Comedy 1960–1980, Eyre Methuen, 1980,
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Ronald Bergan, Beyond the Fringe...and Beyond: a critical biography of Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore, London: Virgin, 1989
External links
