Although I love Alan Bennett’s diaries I’m not entirely sure that this was deserving of a publication on its own. Some really touching and poignant moments in here; a few bits that stand out are when Bennett has a small interaction with a stranger sweeping the street that “makes his morning” (such interactions being rare at that point), a footnote in a poem in LRB triggering a vivid childhood memory from 1941 (genuinely fascinating and one of my favourite things is when a tiny snippet evokes mass nostalgia), and when he struggles to explain how his glasses have broken to an optician because of the lack of speaking he’s done to other people during 2020 (definitely remember making some pretty awful blunders for a good few months until I worked out how to socialise again). The news that the cast and crew of the new Talking Heads series have agreed to take only a nominal fee and donate the profits to the NHS gives him a rare rush of pleasure in a world dominated by the bleak economics of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Alan Bennett's collection of prose, Untold Stories, won the PEN/Ackerley Prize for Autobiography, 2006.

The book is a lovely small hardback with a great cover and pretty inside cover pages, but I just felt I wanted it to be longer. Perhaps to be expected as the author gets older, many of the entries sparked various reminiscences in him, which were interesting. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, along with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose and broadcasting, and many appearances as an actor.He recounts a telling anecdote from 1941 in which the whole family went on a Sunday fishing expedition in the country. In Ritual, pioneering scientist Dimitris Xygalatas leads an enlightening tour through one of the most shadowy realms of human behaviour. Now eighty-six and arthritic, he has swapped his bicycle for a wheelchair, but he gave us two new monologues for the revamp of Talking Heads in 2020 – the royalties from which he donated to NHS charities. The fact that Her Majesty could probably not manage this today is a reminder of how swiftly treacherous advanced old age can be. The book is his personal diary of his time during the lockdown, and he seems to have survived it splendidly.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.Bennett’s House Arrest, covering the Lockdown and Vaccination years, is little more than an Epilogue at a mere 49 pages – a bit longer than a Talking Heads monologue. Since our earliest beginnings, every documented society has gathered to perform elaborate rites and ceremonies - from mass worship to body modification - yet ritual poses a deep paradox: why do we give the utmost importance to otherwise pointless activities? Alan Bennett's collection of prose, Untold Stories , won the PEN/Ackerley Prize for Autobiography, 2006.

Where this tortured restraint does not reach, though, is into Bennett’s ethical worldview which remain as richly communitarian as ever.However, the book really was too short to obtain a good idea of the author's thoughts during the lockdown periods. 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. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Later, arriving at the vaccination centre for his first jab, Bennett firmly announces that he is here “for the virus” (in his defence, he points out that both of them are “v words”). The Queen watches the Remembrance Day ceremony at The Cenotaph with “ a beady eye on the revamped choreography.

The entries begin on 24 February 2020, with the diarist chipper about the unlikelihood of the new virus in Milan having much effect on London living, and chunter on to the autumn of 2021 when the crisis appears to be in the rearview mirror (we know, although he does not, that Omicron is lurking in the wings). House Arrest - Pandemic Diaries' (2022) - is a very lovely, although very short (coming in at less than 50 pages) collection taken from Alan Bennett's diaries of the time. So, my 4* rating reflects how good these 45 pages of musings were but don't reflect my disappointment!Given that 86-year-old Bennett is hobbled with arthritis, this is hardly an ambitious excursion – literally three minutes “round the block” of their north London street. It is a typical Bennett moment, part gentle social comedy part revelation about the self-delusions of the ego.