Alan Bennett

Playwright

• Born: May 9, 1934
• Place of Birth: Leeds, Yorkshire, England

ENGLISH PLAYWRIGHT

Biography

Alan Bennett, one of England’s most popular and critically acclaimed playwrights, was born in Leeds, England, to Walter Bennett, a butcher, and Lilian Mary (Peel) Bennett. As a child, he became interested in the arts, attending concerts by the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra. His military service included a brief stint in the infantry followed by assignment to the Joint Services Language Course to learn Russian, first at Coulsdon and then at Cambridge University. After serving in the army, Bennett read history at Exeter College, Oxford, earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1957. He continued at Oxford, engaging in graduate studies in history and serving as a temporary junior lecturer in history (1960–62), but left without completing his doctoral dissertation.

Bennett’s stage career began in 1960 when having performed comedy routines at Oxford, he joined with three other university men to present a revue of comic and satiric skits, songs, and monologues at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre in Scotland. Invited to participate in the Edinburgh Festival that year, the four performed their revue titled Beyond the Fringe (1960). The revue moved to London’s Fortune Theatre in 1961 and New York’s John Golden Theater the following year. Bennett’s partners went on to successful careers: Peter Cook as a nightclub entertainer, Jonathan Miller as a physician, and Dudley Moore as a pianist and actor. Bennett proved successful in various roles in the theater as well as films and television, including actor, director, and playwright.

After coauthoring Fortune and Golden in the early 1960s, Bennett saw his first solo play, Forty Years On (1968), produced in 1968. A satiric yet affectionate look at the passing of an age, Forty Years On includes a play within a play as a comic revue commemorates the retirement of a veteran headmaster at a boys’ boarding school. The play received a London Evening Standard Drama Award in 1968, as had Beyond the Fringe in 1961.

The 1970s saw Bennett establishing himself as a major figure in both stage drama and television in England. Getting On (1972) earned Bennett another Evening Standard Award (1971), and The Old Country (1978) was named Best New Play for 1977 by Plays & Players. In addition, ten of his teleplays appeared on either the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC-TV) or London Weekend Television (LWT).

During the 1980s, Bennett added screenwriting to his accomplishments, with A Private Function (1984) and Prick Up Your Ears (1987). The former examines British social classes; the latter is a biography of playwright Joe Orton and has been noted by critics for its skillful use of irony, an ingredient in much of Bennett’s work. On the stage, Kafka’s Dick (1986) was named Best New Play of 1986 by Plays & Players. The play features an insurance salesperson obsessed with author Franz Kafka. The Insurance Man (1986) is also concerned with Kafka, an author whose seemingly contradictory desires for obscurity and fame appeared to resonate with Bennett’s own motivations.

Bennett’s many teleplays during the 1980s included An Englishman Abroad (1983), an account of English spy Guy Burgess seven years after he defected to Russia, which earned the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Writers Award (1983) and the Royal Television Society Award (1984), and Talking Heads (1990), a series of six monologues by lower-middle-class individuals from northern England expressing the alienation and loneliness of their lives, which won the Hawthornden Prize (1989).

Despite leaving his doctoral studies unfinished, Bennett was named an honorary fellow of Exeter College in 1987. Within a few years, he expanded his fame by drawing on his knowledge of history, the discipline in which he had once aspired to an academic career. In the 1990s, Bennett became famous with American audiences, primarily because of the popular and critical success of the film The Madness of King George (1995), based on his play The Madness of George III (1991). The film received four Academy Award nominations, including one for Bennett’s screenplay. The author appeared in a minor role in the film, continuing an acting career that has seen him perform in many of his own works.

In addition to his dramatic writing, Bennett published Writing Home (1994), a collection of essays, prefaces, character sketches, and diary entries, in 1994. This somewhat fragmented memoir became a bestseller in England. He also turned increasingly to fiction, publishing his first novel, The Clothes They Stood Up In (2001), and a collection of stories, The Laying On of Hands (2000).

In the 2000s, Bennett had further success with screen adaptations of his work, including The History Boys (2006), a 2006 film based on his 2004 play of the same name, and The Lady in the Van (2015), a 2015 film starring Maggie Smith, based on his 1999 play of that name. The History Boys (2004) play won the 2005 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and the 2006 Tony Award for Best Play. The Lady in the Van is based on the true story of a woman who lived in a van parked in Bennett's London driveway for fifteen years. Smith also starred in the stage production and was nominated for the 2000 Olivier Award for Best Actress for her performance; the play itself won the 2000 Olivier Award for Play of the Year.

Bennett has continued his prolific career throughout the twenty-first century. In theater, he has written The Habit of Art (2009), People (2012), Cocktail Sticks (2012), and Allelujah! (2018). He has continued writing outside of film and theater as well. In 2005, Bennett published Untold Stories, a collection of memoirs and essays. Other memoirs, essays, novellas, and stories published in the 2000s and 2010s include: The Uncommon Reader (2007), A Life Like Other People's (2009), Smut: Two Unseemly Stories (2011), Six Poets: Hardy to Larkin: An Anthology (2015), Keeping On Keeping On (2016), and The Shielding of Mrs Forbes (2019). Bennett remains a well-loved figure in British popular culture, with a character portraying him in Netflix’s popular show about the British royal family, The Crown (2016-2023), and also appearing in a 2022 British comedy special. At ninety years old, Bennett is the only surviving member of the original Beyond the Fringe group. 

Alan Bennett has become widely acknowledged as one of the most important British playwrights, with some critics calling him the foremost British author writing for the stage. He has been praised for his rich dialogue, complex use of irony (usually aligned with sympathy for his subjects), verbal wit, facility at finding the correct word, and humor.

Bibliography

Games, Alexander. Backing into the Limelight. London: Headline, 2001.

Guest, Katy, et al. “Alan Bennett Contemplates Losing Friends and the Queen in 2022 Diary.” The Guardian, 21 Dec. 2022, www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/dec/21/alan-bennett-the-queen-2022-diary. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Herman, David. “Alan Bennett at 90.” The Critic, 18 May 2024, thecritic.co.uk/alan-bennett-at-90. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Lawson, Mark. "Alan Bennett at 80: Everything but a National Treasure." TheGuardian, 9 May 2014, www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/may/09/alan-bennett-80-birthday-mark-lawson. Accessed 8 July 2024.

O’Mealy, Joseph H. Alan Bennett: A Critical Introduction. New York: Garland, 2001.

Turner, Daphne E. Alan Bennett: In a Manner of Speaking. London: Faber, 1997.

Wilmut, Roger. From Fringe to Flying Circus: Celebrating a Unique Generation of Comedy, 1960–1980. London: Eyre, 1980.

Wolfe, Peter. Understanding Alan Bennett. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1999.