Download or read book The Clothes They Stood Up In written by Alan Bennett and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2014-05-09 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Clothes They Stood Up In is Alan Bennett's first story. Like Charles Dickens' novels which were first published in magazines, it originally appeared in the London Review of Books - which the author says 'seems to me (and not just because I occasionally contribute to it) the liveliest, most serious and also the most radical literary periodical we have'.
Download or read book The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady and the Van written by Alan Bennett and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2002-11-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Alan Bennett, the author of The Madness of King George, come two stories about the strange nature of possessions...or the lack of them. In the nationally bestselling novel The Clothes They Stood Up In, the staid Ransomes return from the opera to find their Regent’s Park flat stripped bare--right down to the toilet-paper roll. Free of all their earthly belongings, the couple faces a perplexing question: Who are they without the things they’ve spent a lifetime accumulating? Suddenly a world of unlimited, frightening possibility opens up before them. In “The Lady in the Van,” which The Village Voice called “one of the finest bursts of comic writing the twentieth century has produced,” Bennett recounts the strange life of Miss Shepherd, a London eccentric who parked her van (overstuffed with decades’ worth of old clothes, oozing batteries, and kitchen utensils still in their original packaging) in the author’s driveway for more than fifteen years. A mesmerizing portrait of an outsider with an acquisitive taste and an indomitable spirit, this biographical essay is drawn with equal parts fascination and compassion.
Download or read book The Lady in the Van written by Alan Bennett and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2015-10-21 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film tie in edition of Alan Bennett's classic memoir. For fifteen years, the recalcitrant Miss Shepherd lived in her broken-down van on Alan Bennett's driveway in Camden. Deeply eccentric and stubborn to her bones, Miss Shepherd was not an easy tenant. Bennett, despite inviting her in the first place, was a reluctant landlord, never under the illusion that his impulse was purely charitable. This account of those years was first published in 1989 in the London Review of Books. The play premiered in 1999, direct by Nicholas Hytner and starring Dame Maggie Smith, who reprise those roles in this new film adaptation. Shot on location at Bennett's house, Alex Jennings plays the author, alongside household names including James Corden, Frances de la Tour, Jim Broadbent and Dominic Cooper.
Download or read book Alan Bennett written by Joseph O'Mealy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alan Bennett is perhaps best known in the UK for the BBC production of his Talking Heads TV plays, while the rest of the world may recognize him for the film adaptation of his play, The Madness of King George. O'Mealy points out that Bennett is a social critic strongly influenced by Beckett and Swift, interested in depicting and analyzing the role playing of everyday life, a'la sociologist Ervin Goffman.
Download or read book Alan Bennett written by Joseph H. O'Mealy and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Four Stories written by Alan Bennett and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2015-12-03 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like everything Bennett does, these stories are playful, witty and painfully observant of ordinary people's foibles. They all have brilliant twists, are immensely entertaining and highly moral. And all are modern classics. The Laying on of Hands The painfully observant account of a memorial service for a masseur to the famous. The Clothes They Stood Up In The comic tale of an elderly couple's trials after their flat is stripped completely bare. Father! Father! Burning Bright The savage satire on the family of a dying man who rules over them from his hospital bed. The Lady in the Van The true story of the eccentric old woman who is invited to live in a homeowner's front garden. She stays there, in her van, for fifteen years. The home is Alan Bennett's. It became a West End hit and a major film, starring Maggie Smith.
Download or read book Writing Home written by Alan Bennett and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together the hilarious, revealing, and lucidly intelligent writing of one of England's best known literary figures, Writing Home includes the journalism, book and theater reviews, and diaries of Alan Bennett, as well as "The Lady in the Van," his unforgettable account of Miss Shepherd, a London eccentric who lived in a van in Bennett's garden for more than twenty years. This revised and updated edition includes new material from the author, including more recent diaries and his introduction to his Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Madness of King George. A chronicle of one of the most important literary careers of the twentieth century, Writing Home is a classic history of a life in letters.
Download or read book The Uncommon Reader written by Alan Bennett and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-09-18 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of England's most celebrated writers, a funny and superbly observed novella about the Queen of England and the subversive power of reading When her corgis stray into a mobile library parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen feels duty-bound to borrow a book. Discovering the joy of reading widely (from J. R. Ackerley, Jean Genet, and Ivy Compton-Burnett to the classics) and intelligently, she finds that her view of the world changes dramatically. Abetted in her newfound obsession by Norman, a young man from the royal kitchens, the Queen comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with the routines of her role as monarch. Her new passion for reading initially alarms the palace staff and soon leads to surprising and very funny consequences for the country at large. With the poignant and mischievous wit of The History Boys, England's best loved author Alan Bennett revels in the power of literature to change even the most uncommon reader's life.
Download or read book Smut written by Alan Bennett and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2012-01-03 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of England's finest and most loved writers explores the uncomfortable and tragicomic gap between people's public appearance and their private desires in two tender and surprising stories. In The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson, a recently bereaved widow finds interesting ways to supplement her income by performing as a patient for medical students, and renting out her spare room. Quiet, middle-class, and middle-aged, Mrs. Donaldson will soon discover that she rather enjoys role-play at the hospital, and the irregular and startling entertainment provided by her tenants. In The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes, a disappointed middle-aged mother dotes on her only son, Graham, who believes he must shield her from the truth. As Graham's double life becomes increasingly complicated, we realize how little he understands, not only of his own desires but also those of his mother. A master storyteller dissects a very English form of secrecy with two stories of the unexpected in otherwise apparently ordinary lives.
Download or read book The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature written by David Scott Kastan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-03 with total page 2656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From folk ballads to film scripts, this new five-volume encyclopedia covers the entire history of British literature from the seventh century to the present, focusing on the writers and the major texts of what are now the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. In five hundred substantial essays written by major scholars, the Encyclopedia of British Literature includes biographies of nearly four hundred individual authors and a hundred topical essays with detailed analyses of particular themes, movements, genres, and institutions whose impact upon the writing or the reading of literature was significant. An ideal companion to The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, this set will prove invaluable for students, scholars, and general readers. For more information, including a complete table of contents and list of contributors, please visit www.oup.com/us/ebl
Download or read book Keeping On Keeping On written by Alan Bennett and published by . This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[This text] contains [Alan] Bennett's diaries from 2005 to 2015, with everything from his much celebrated essays to his irreverent comic pieces and reviews, reflecting on a decade that saw four major theater premieres and the films of 'The History Boys' and 'The Lady in the Van'"--Amazon.com.
Download or read book Untold Stories written by Alan Bennett and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 820 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alan Bennett's first collection of prose since Writing Home takes in all his major writings over the last ten years. The title piece is a poignant family memoir with an account of the marriage of his parents, the lives and deaths of his aunts and the uncovering of a long-held family secret. Bennett, as always, is both amusing and poignant, whether he's discussing his modest childhood or his work with the likes of Maggie Smith, Thora Hird and John Gielgud. Also included are his much celebrated diaries for the years 1996 to 2004. At times heartrending and at others extremely funny, Untold Stories is a matchless and unforgettable anthology. Since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s Alan Bennett has delighted audiences worldwide with his gentle humour and wry observations about life. His many works include Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, Talking Heads, A Question of Attribution and The Madness of King George. The History Boys opened to great acclaim at the National in 2004, and is winner of the Evening Standard Award, the South Bank Award and the Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play. 'Perhaps the best loved of English writers alive today.' Sunday Telegraph Untold Stories is published jointly with Profile Books.
Download or read book Making Plays written by D. Wu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-12 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making Plays explores great drama of the last two decades through the eyes of those who write it, and those who direct it. It is at once a masterclass on theatrical technique and a unique insight into the ways in which great dramatists of our time have reacted to a rapidly changing world. In this book Duncan Wu talks to Michael Attenborough, Alan Bennett, Michael Blakemore, Howard Brenton, David Edgar, Sir Richard Eyre, Michael Frayn, Sir David Hare, Nicholas Hytner, and Max Stafford-Clark.
Download or read book The History Boys A Play written by Alan Bennett and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2006-04-04 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A play of depth as well as dazzle, intensely moving as well as thought-provoking and funny." —The Daily Telegraph In The History Boys, Alan Bennett evokes the special period and place that the sixth form represents in an English boy's life. In doing so, he raises—with gentle wit and pitch-perfect command of character—not only universal questions about the nature of history and how it is taught but also questions about the purpose of education today. An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form (or senior) boys in a British boys' school are, as such boys will be, in pursuit of sex, sport, and a place at a good university, generally in that order. In all their efforts, they are helped and hindered, enlightened and bemused, by a maverick English teacher who seeks to broaden their horizons in sometimes undefined ways, and a young history teacher who questions the methods, as well as the aim, of their schooling. Winner of six Tony Awards, The History Boys was also made into a movie of the same name in 2006.
Download or read book Alan Bennett Plays 2 written by Alan Bennett and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second volume of plays by Alan Bennett includes his two Kafka plays, one an hilarious comedy, the other a profound and searching drama. Also included is An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution. The fascination of these two plays lies in the way they question our accepted notions of treachery and, in different ways, make a sympathetic case for Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt.
Download or read book The History Boys The Film written by Alan Bennett and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2006-11-14 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a major motion picture from Fox Searchlight Pictures, The History Boys: The Film contains Alan Bennett's diary of the filming, the shooting script, and an introduction by director Nicholas Hytner, as well as an extensive plate section that includes a look behind the scenes and stills from the film. An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form (or senior) boys in a British boys' school are, as such boys will be, in pursuit of sex, sport, and a place at a good university, generally in that order. In all their efforts, they are helped and hindered, enlightened and bemused, by a maverick English teacher who seeks to broaden their horizons in sometimes undefined ways, and a young history teacher who questions the methods, as well as the aim, of their schooling. In The History Boys, Alan Bennett evokes the special period and place that the sixth form represents in an English boy's life. In doing so, he raises not only universal questions about the nature of history and how it is taught but also questions about the purpose of education today.
Download or read book Father Father Burning Bright written by Alan Bennett and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2014-05-09 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alan Bennett's second story. This time, set in the 1970s, in classic Bennett country, Yorkshire. 'On the many occasions Midgley had killed his father, death had always come easily. He died promptly, painlessly and without a struggle. Looking back, Midgley could see that even in these imagined deaths he had failed his father. It was not like him to die like that. Nor did he.' Midgley is determined to deny his father a last occasion to be disappointed in him. He will do the right thing and sit by his father's bed-side in Intensive Care until he dies. But, even when he is unconscious, his father manages to make Midgley's life a misery. This is another classic story by Alan Bennett, with brilliant portraits of social hypocrisy and stifling family relationships.
