Alan Bennett Books In Order

Collections

  1. Office Suite (1981)
  2. Objects of Affection (1982)
  3. Two Kafka Plays: Kafka’s Dick / The Insurance Man (1987)
  4. Alan Bennett Double Bill (1988)
  5. Intensive Care and Other T.V.Plays (1989)
  6. Single Spies and Talking Heads (1990)
  7. The Complete Beyond the Fringe (1992)
  8. Alan Bennett at the BBC (1998)
  9. The Complete Talking Heads (1998)
  10. A Box of Bennetts (2000)
  11. The Laying On of Hands (2001)
  12. The Clothes They Stood Up In / The Lady in the Van (2002)
  13. Forty Years on / A Woman of No Importance (2003)
  14. Three Stories: Father! Father! Burning Bright, The Clothes They Stood Up In, The Laying on of Hands (2003)
  15. Me, I’m Afraid of Virginia Woolf (2003)
  16. Rolling Home (2003)
  17. Alan and Thora (2004)
  18. Four Stories (2006)
  19. Alan Bennett’s ‘On the Margin’ (2009)
  20. Triple Bill (2010)
  21. Smut (2011)
  22. Alan Bennett Stories (2016)

Chapbooks

  1. Father! Father! Burning Bright (2000)

Plays

  1. Beyond the Fringe (1963)
  2. Forty Years on (1969)
  3. Getting on (1972)
  4. Habeas Corpus (1973)
  5. The Old Country (1978)
  6. Enjoy (1980)
  7. A Private Function (1984)
  8. The Writer in Disguise (1985)
  9. Prick Up Your Ears (1987)
  10. Kafka’s Dick (1987)
  11. Green Forms (1988)
  12. Talking Heads (1988)
  13. Visit from Miss Prothero (1988)
  14. Single Spies (1989)
  15. The Lady in the Van (1990)
  16. The Wind in the Willows: Play (1991)
  17. The Madness of King George (1992)
  18. A Chip in the Sugar (1994)
  19. A Lady of Letters (1994)
  20. A Woman of No Importance (1994)
  21. Soldiering On (1995)
  22. Say Something Happened (1996)
  23. Power Pyramid of Abramelin (1997)
  24. Power Windows (1997)
  25. Bed Among the Lentils (1998)
  26. A Cream Cracker Under the Settee (1998)
  27. Her Big Chance (1998)
  28. The Clothes They Stood Up In (1998)
  29. Talking Heads 2 (1998)
  30. Telling Tales (2000)
  31. An Englishman Abroad (2001)
  32. Hymn (2002)
  33. The History Boys (2004)
  34. The Habit of Art (2009)
  35. Hymn and Co*cktail Sticks (2012)
  36. People (2012)
  37. Alan Bennett Box Set (2014)
  38. Alan Bennett: Plays (2016)
  39. Allelujah! (2018)

Novellas

  1. The Uncommon Reader (2007)
  2. The Shielding of Mrs Forbes (2019)

Non fiction

  1. A Working Life (1990)
  2. Alan Bennett : Diaries 1980-1990 (1995)
  3. The Red Baron’s Last Flight (1997)
  4. Loose Canon: A Portrait of Brian Brindley (2004)
  5. A Life Like Other People’s (2009)
  6. The Library Book (2012)
  7. Captain Roy Brown (2014)
  8. Six Poets: Hardy to Larkin (2014)
  9. Keeping on Keeping on (2016)
  10. Two Besides: A Pair of Talking Heads (2020)
  11. House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries (2022)

Collections Book Covers

Chapbooks Book Covers

Plays Book Covers

Novellas Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Alan Bennett Books Overview

Alan Bennett Double Bill

Audio Cassette, BBC Audiobooks Ltd

Alan Bennett at the BBC

An anthology of Alan Bennett’s radio and television work, among which are interviews, extracts from his plays and diaries, and tributes to friends such as Russell Harty and Peter Cook. A linking script, written and read by Bennett, is included.

The Complete Talking Heads

Alan Bennett’s award winning series of solo pieces is a classic of contemporary drama, universally hailed for its combination of razor sharp wit and deeply felt humanity. In Bed Among the Lentils, a vicar’s wife discovers a semblance of happiness with an Indian shop owner. In A Chip in the Sugar, a man’s life begins to unravel when he discovers his aging mother has rekindled an old flame. In A Lady of Letters, a busybody pays a price for interfering in her neighbor’s life. First produced for BBC television in 1988 to great critical acclaim, the Talking Heads monologues also appeared on the West End Stage in London in 1992 and 1998. In 2002, seven of the pieces were performed at the Tiffany Theater in Los Angeles for a highly praised brief engagement, and in 2003 a selection of the monologues premiered in New York at the Minetta Lane Theatre. These extraordinary portraits of ordinary people confirm Alan Bennett’s place as one of the most gifted, versatile, and important writers in the English Language.

A Box of Bennetts

The box contains: The Clothes They Stood Up In, the story of an elderly couple who have had everything they own stolen. The Lady in the Van, a play about a homeless old lady, Miss Shepherd, who lived in a car in Bennett’s driveway for 15 years. Father! Father! Burning Bright, about Midgeley and his stifling relationship with his father.

The Laying On of Hands

Alan Bennett’s extraordinary ear for dialogue and sharpness of perception have made him a master storyteller. In Father! Father! Burning Bright he writes with tragicomic insight about a son s vigil at his father s deathbed where their lifelong battle continues to the end. The Laying On of Hands, a brilliantly funny satire, describes a society memorial service for a rather special masseur who died tragically young; and in Miss Fozzard Finds her Feet, a lonely, unmarried department store clerk discovers there s more to life than looking after her brother through her only indulgence, her podiatrist.

The Clothes They Stood Up In / The Lady in the Van

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.

Alan and Thora

Audio Cassette, BBC Audiobooks Ltd

Alan Bennett’s ‘On the Margin’

This title covers highlights from the satirical, political comedy TV sketch show starring Alan Bennett, John Sergeant and Virginia Stride. On the Margin was a six part BBC TV satirical comedy sketch show written and performed by Alan Bennett, with John ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ Sergeant and Virginia Stride. It was first broadcast in 1966 and was such a critical success that it was repeated twice the following year. Although Alan Bennett already famous due to ‘Beyond the Fringe’ took swipes at contemporary Britain, his love of his country’s cultural heritage always remained. Besides Bennett, the series also featured Yvonne Gillan, Madge Hindle and Roland MacLeod. However, On the Margin sadly became one of the notorious casualties of the BBC’s tape recycling policies and the series was completely wiped after its final broadcast. This compilation is the only recording of On the Margin that remains…

Triple Bill

A Triple Bill of Alan Bennett plays released on audio for the first time. Includes: Say Something Happened – A council worker calls on an elderly couple — but she needs more help than they do. With Thora Hird, Brian Wilde and Imelda Staunton. Two in Torquay – A man and woman converse in a Torquay hotel, but who are they really and who is deceiving whom? Stars Judi Dench and Alan Bennett. A Visit From Miss Prothero – Since Mr Dodsworth retired he had all the time in the world — then he had a caller: Miss Prothero. With Hugh Lloyd and Patricia Routledge.

Smut

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.

Father! Father! Burning Bright

Alan Bennett’s second story, set in the 1970s in Yorkshire. Midgeley is determined to deny his father a last occasion to be disappointed in him. He will do the right thing and sit by his intensive care bedside till he dies. But even unconscious his father manages to make Midgeley’s life a misery. A portrait of stifling family relationships

Forty Years on

Alan Bennett stars in a new production of his own acclaimed satrical comedy, thirty years after its original West End debut. The Headmaster has been at Albion House for fifty years, man and boy. Now he is retiring and takes part in the end of year entertainment for the last time. Entitled ‘Speak For England, Arthur’, it weaves together a multi generational story of England: the glorious era at the turn of the century, when the summers were always golden; the fast living inter war years peopled by the Bloomsbury Group; and the growing cynicism of a country going to war twice in so many decades. Tongue in cheek, the play within a play prompts an outraged response from the Headmaster, who can only see his beloved standards being mocked. Yet within the parody lies an almost painful nostalgia for a more peaceful age and the timeless misunderstanding of one generation by another. Clever, funny and poignant, Alan Bennett’s masterful play is rightly regarded as a modern classic.

Kafka’s Dick

Audio CD, BBC Audiobooks Ltd

Talking Heads

This title features: ‘A Chip in the Sugar’ with Alan Bennett, ‘A Lady of Letters’ with Patricia Routledge, ‘Bed Among the Lentils’ with Anna Massey, ‘Soldiering On’ with Stephanie Cole, ‘Her Big Chance’ with Julie Walters, and ‘A Cream Cracker Under the Settee’ with Thora Hird. Alan Bennett’ six monologues are poignant, funny and written with the author’s powerful insight into human nature. As a TV series, a book, a stage play and an audio, ‘Talking Heads‘ has become a phenomenon.

Single Spies

A critically acclaimed double bill of Alan Bennett plays, adapted for BBC Radio. An Englishman Abroad – It is 1958, and in a squalid flat in Moscow, double-agent Guy Burgess is hiding from the world. When he is visited by actress Coral Browne, he is overjoyed to see someone from his former life in England. Starved for information, Burgess interrogates her about English society gossip. A Question of Attribution – In 1956, Sir Anthony Blunt – pillar of the Establishment and respected Knight of the Realm – is working as Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures. Perfectly at home in the corridors of Buckingham Palace, he frequently encounters Her Majesty as he works on her paintings, and has a special fondness for one particular Titian. However, there is one small problem: the painting, like Blunt himself, is a fake. Is the Queen aware that her enigmatic servant might also be other than he seems? Poignant and moving, these two brand new adaptations feature Simon Callow, Brigit Forsyth, Edward Petherbridge and Prunella Scales.

The Lady in the Van

An eccentric old lady moves into a quiet street in Camden Town. There she remains, installed in her van in glorious self sufficiency, until the council instructs her to move on. A kind homeowner invites her to move her van into his garden. A bizarre tale in itself, but when the homeowner is writer Alan Bennett and the lady stays for 15 years, it’s a tale that provides the raw material for a book and a stage play. This is the fascinating story of Miss Shepherd, the genteel vagrant who found a unique place in Alan Bennett’s life and writing. Adapted from his stage play and directed by Gordon House, this new version stars Maggie Smith, Alan Bennett and Adrian Scarborough. ‘Truly brilliant and totally unmissable’ ‘Radio Times’.

The Wind in the Willows: Play

The tales of Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad. When Mole goes boating with the Water Rat instead of spring cleaning, he discovers a new world. As well as the river and the Wild Wood, there is Toad’s craze for fast travel which leads him and his friends on a whirl of trains, barges, gipsy caravans and motor cars and even into battle.

The Madness of King George

The Madness of George III is one of Alan Bennett’s most popular plays, first performed in 1991, and adapted for BBC Radio. A fictionalized biographical study of the latter half of the reign of George III of Great Britain, his battle with mental illness and the inability of his court to handle his condition. Includes music by Handel.

The Clothes They Stood Up In

This is a quirky, wry and ironic tale about the Ransomes who have been burgled. Everything has gone, even the toilet paper, and for the stuffy solicitor and his wife it marks a turning point. ‘Welcome to the wonderful world of Alan Bennett, deliciously enriched by the voice of the master himself’ ‘The Sunday Times.’

Talking Heads 2

This title features stories like ‘Playing Sandwiches with David Haig’, ‘The Hand of God with Eileen Atkins’, ‘Nights in the Gardens of Spain with Penelope Wilton’, ‘Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet with Patricia Routledge’, ‘Waiting for the Telegram with Thora Hird’, and, ‘The Outside Dog with Julie Walters’. A second collection of astutely observed monologues, tales of loneliness and eccentricity are handled with the light touch which has made Alan Bennett, one of our best loved writers as well as a national institution.

Telling Tales

This book features ten childhood snapshots from the master of the monologue such as: ‘A Strip Of Blue’, ‘Proper Names’, ‘Our War’, ‘Eating Out’, ‘An Ideal Home’, ‘Aunt Eveline’, ‘A Shy Butcher’, ‘Unsaid Prayers’, ‘Days Out’, and, ‘No Mean City’. Following on from the phenomenal success of ‘Writing Home’, Alan Bennett reminisces about his early years from his schooldays to undergraduate life at Oxford University. It was an ordinary childhood growing up in Leeds taught Alan early on that ‘life is generally something that happens elsewhere’. Yet the children who long for German bombs to lend their city some wartime glamour; the working class mother who reads ‘Ideal Home’ and dreams of coffee mornings and cocktail parties; and 18 year old Alan a practising Anglican who is deeply distrustful of God, strike a chord within all of us. In fact, it is their very ordinariness that makes these tales so special combined, of course, with the wry observation and tender understatement that have earned Alan Bennett his place at the forefront of contemporary writing.

An Englishman Abroad

Michael Gambon is Guy Burgess and Penelope Wilton the actress Coral Browne in Bennett’s re telling of a real life incident. Whilst touring ‘Hamlet’ Moscow with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1958, Browne is astonished to have Burgess appear in her dressing room. Having disappeared from England in 1951 together with fellow diplomat Donald Maclean, spy Burgess is a wanted man. Bennett’s take on the encounter is both poignant and comic, and the play examines his life in exile, his love of England and his even greater love of Russia. This full cast dramatisation was originally broadcast on BBC World Service.

Hymn

Audio Cassette, BBC Audiobooks Ltd

The History Boys

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.

The Habit of Art

Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W. H. Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first in twenty five years, they are observed and interrupted by, among others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. Alan Bennett’s new play is as much about the theater as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion s spent: ultimately, on The Habit of Art.

The Uncommon Reader

From one of England’s most celebrated writers, the author of the award winning The History Boys, 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.

Alan Bennett : Diaries 1980-1990

Alan Bennett’s gentle, wry observations of life have made him one of the country’s best loved and most famous authors. He reads extracts from his bestselling diaries which offer a fascinating insight into his life the work on location, life in Camden and fond, poignant memories of his childhood and home life.

The Red Baron’s Last Flight

Much has been written about Manfred von Richthofen’s last flight and combat on the morning of April 21st 1918, and much controversy remains to this day. Both authors have travelled to the sight of Richthofen’s final crash, studied the landscape and have discovered what many eye witnesses of the time could see, and more importantly, what they could not have seen. During research for ‘Under the Guns of the Red Baron’, a file of letters written by eye witnesses to von Richthofen’s crash, dated in the 1930s, was discovered. These letters were written many years before later reports became clouded in the mists of time. The final result is a detailed account of von Richthofen’s last flight in which he persued a Sopwith Camel across the allied front line, and ended in a mortal wound from a single bullet.

Loose Canon: A Portrait of Brian Brindley

It could not have been better stage managed. Brian Brindley died over dinner at The Atheneum Club in London having consumed stuffed crab and as boeuf en croute was being prepared in the kitchen. Surrounded by his acolytes, he would certainly agree with Sydney Smith that heaven was Foie Gras and Trumpets but his heaven started on earth. There was much sadness in Brian Brindley’s life. Emerging from Oxford Pi in the High he eventually took up an appointment as a Vicar in Reading having fought vigorously against the ordination of women and other manifestations of modernity. But one fine day a journalist from a nasty Tabloid tricked him into talking about his sexual life and fantasies, recorded the interview and printed extracts in his newspaper. The result was devastating and Brindley resigned. He retired to Brighton and was received into the Roman Catholic Church. But in the process he became a hero to countless thousands of people who love the Old Order. High Tories for whom ritual remains of the utmost importance. And having been stitched up by a tabloid newspaper only increased the admiration in which he was held. Alan Bennett, leader of the fan club, has written a brilliant opening chapter in which he describes Brindley’s magic but also his deep charity and pastoral care. Others follow including A.N. Wilson and Telegraph correspondent Damian Thompson. This will become a cult book for assuredly Brindley was the last of his kind.

A Life Like Other People’s

In this poignant memoir of his parents marriage, Alan Bennett recalls the lost world of his childhood and the lives, loves, and deaths of his unforgettable aunties, Kathleen and Myra. First published in the acclaimed collection Untold Stories, this tender, intimate family portrait beautifully captures the Bennetts hopes, disappointments, and yearning for a life like other people s. With the sudden descent of his mother into depression, and later dementia, Bennett uncovers a long held family secret in this extraordinarily moving and at times irresistibly funny work of autobiography.

The Library Book

‘Hill provides us with a reading list the equal of any degree course.’ The Times LondonIn pursuit of a book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year long voyage through her books in order to get to know her own collection again. Susan Hill is the winner of numerous prestigious literary awards. She is the author of a highly successful crime series as well as the famous The Woman in Black.

Captain Roy Brown

The mysterious death of the Red Baron in 1918 comes to life in this highly illustrated WWI history. The first part reveals Captain Arthur Roy Brown, Canadian ace fighter pilot, via previously unpublished letters, entries in his Pilot’s Flying Log Book, and his surviving and unedited Combat Reports. Over 500 photographs, most never before published, plus diagrams and maps illustrate Brown’s encounters with Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron.

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