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The Lady in the Van and Other Stories - Bennett, Alan Review & Synopsis

 Synopsis

Now a major motion picture starring Maggie Smith, Alan Bennett's famous and heartwarming story "The Lady in the Van," and more of Bennett's classic short-form work

Alan Bennett has long been one of the world's most revered humorists. From his acclaimed story collection Smut to his hilarious and sharply observed The Uncommon Reader, Bennett has consistently remained one of literature's most acute observers of Britain and life's many absurdities.

In this new collection, drawn from his wide-ranging career, you'll read some of Bennett's finest work, including the title story, the basis for a new feature film starring Maggie Smith. The book also includes the rollicking comic masterpiece "The Laying on of Hands" and the bittersweet "Father! Father! Burning Bright," Bennett's classic tale of the tense relationship between a man and his dying father.

Review

ALAN BENNETT has been one of England's leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960's. His work includes the Talking Heads television series, and the stage plays Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Question of Attribution, and The Madness of King George III, since made into a major motion picture. His play, The History Boys (also a major motion picture), won six Tony Awards, including best play, in 2006. His other books include the critically acclaimed collected writings Untold Stories and Writing Home, Smut (short stories), The Uncommon Reader (a novella), and many more.

"[Alan Bennett] is a prose stylist of disarming grace and humor." -The New York Times Book Review

"Bennett's genius is for the imploding situation in which a cleverly made house of cards shudders and comes down; the comments of his characters as they nimbly pick their way around the wreckage verge on aphorism." -The New Yorker

"In the hands of Alan Bennett, the tragic and painful are close bedfellows with the funny and the sexual, making for a collection of stories in which we laugh at the situations presented and then feel a twinge of guilt." -Los Angeles Times

The Lady in the Van

The screenplay edition of the major motion picture adaptation, starring Maggie Smith, of Alan Bennett's acclaimed story "The Lady in the Van" From acclaimed author and playwright Alan Bennett, whose smash hit The History Boys won a Tony Award for Best Play, comes the screenplay of The Lady in the Van-soon to be a major motion picture starring Dame Maggie Smith. The Lady in the Van is the true story of Bennett's experiences with an eccentric homeless woman, Miss Mary Shepherd, whom he befriended in the 1970s and allowed to temporarily park her van in front of his Camden home. She ended up staying there for fifteen years, resulting in an uncommon, often infuriating, and always highly entertaining friendship of a lifetime for the author. Read the screenplay of the film destined to be among the most talked about of the year, and discover the unbelievable story of one of the most unlikely-yet heartwarmingly real-relationships in modern literature.

The screenplay edition of the major motion picture adaptation, starring Maggie Smith, of Alan Bennett's acclaimed story "The Lady in the Van" From acclaimed author and playwright Alan Bennett, whose smash hit The History Boys won a Tony ..."

Untold Stories

"[Bennett] does what only the best writers can do—make us look at ourselves in a way we've never done before." —Michael Palin Untold Stories brings together some of the finest and funniest writing by one of England's best-known literary figures. Alan Bennett's first major collection since Writing Home contains previously unpublished work—including the title piece, a poignant memoir of his family and of growing up in Leeds—along with his much celebrated diary for the years 1996 to 2004, and numerous other exceptional essays, reviews, and comic pieces. In this highly anticipated compendium, the Today Book Club author of The Clothes They Stood Up In reveals a great many untold secrets and stories with his inimitable humor and wry honesty—his family's unspoken history, his memories of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and his response to the success of his most recent play, The History Boys. Since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s, Bennett has delighted audiences worldwide with writing that is, in his words, "no less serious because it is funny." The History Boys opened to great acclaim at the Royal National Theatre in 2004, winning numerous awards, and is scheduled to open in New York City in April 2006.

Untold Stories brings together some of the finest and funniest writing by Alan Bennett, one of England's best-known literary figures. "[Bennett] does what only the best writers can do—make us look at ourselves in a way we've never done ..."

Four Stories

"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 a 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."--BOOK JACKET.

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."--BOOK JACKET."

The Laying On of Hands

Three stories in one volume from one of Britain's most admired authors and playwrights. The Laying On Of Hands is Bennett at his inimitable best in this funny, and mischievous satire about a society memorial service for a rather special masseur who has died at a tragically young age in Peru. In "Father! Father! Burning Bright" Bennett writes with tragicomic insight about a son's vigil at his father's deathbed where their lifelong battle continues to the end. With his pared down and deceptively simple prose style Bennett unflinchingly describes the random thoughts and haphazard conversations of the family members waiting in the hospital as they face life and death. In "Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet" a podiatrist shows a lonely, unmarried department store clerk that there's more to life than looking after her brother. Part of the award winning and critically acclaimed Talking Heads series, "Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet" was described in the New York Times as both "touching" and "hilarious."

The Laying On Of Hands is Bennett at his inimitable best in this funny, and mischievous satire about a society memorial service for a rather special masseur who has died at a tragically young age in Peru. In "Father! Father!"

Writing Home

Already a bestseller, this is a wonderfully entertaining collection of Alan Bennett's prose writings. Writing Home brings together diaries, reminiscences and reviews to give us a unique and unforgettable portrait of one of England's leading playwrights. As a memoir it covers the production of his very first play, Forty Years On, which starred John Gieldgud. His television series 'Talking Heads' has become a modern-day classic; as part of the 1960s revue 'Beyond the Fringe' Bennett helped to kick-start the English satire revolution, and has since remained one of our leading dramatists, most recently with The History Boys at the National Theatre. At the heart of the book is The Lady in The Van, since adapted into a radio play featuring Dame Maggie Smith. It is the true account of Miss Mary Shepherd, a homeless tramp who took up residence in Bennett's garden and stayed for fifteen years. This new edition also includes Bennett's introduction to his Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Madness of King George and his more recent diaries.

Already a bestseller, this is a wonderfully entertaining collection of Alan Bennett's prose writings."

Me, I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Alan Bennett is the acknowledged master of the television play. This vintage collection of his work from the 1970s illustrates his skill and mastery of the medium from the beginning. Perceptive, poignant, truthful and very funny, the work here gives as much enjoyment in the reading as it did in the viewing, and provides a welcome addition to the Bennett canon. The television plays included are A Day Out, Sunset Across the Bay, A Visit from Miss Prothero, Me, I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Green Forms, The Old Crowd and Afternoon Off. This volume contains a new general introduction by Alan Bennett, as well as the original preface by Lindsay Anderson to The Old Crowd. A companion volume of Alan Bennett's work from the late 1970s and early 1980s is published as Rolling Home.

Published to coincide with a retrospective of Alan Bennett's television work at the National Film Theatre, this collection is full of the observations of life as it is lived, and includes: A Day Out; Sunset Across the Bay; A Visit from Miss ..."

The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady and 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.

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."

Keeping On Keeping On

A collection of Bennett’s diaries and essays, covering 2005 to 2015 Alan Bennett’s third collection of prose, Keeping On Keeping On, follows in the footsteps of the phenomenally successful Writing Home and Untold Stories. Bringing together the hilarious, revealing, and lucidly intelligent writing of one of England’s best-known literary figures, Keeping On Keeping On contains 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. A chronicle of one of the most important literary careers of the twentieth century, Keeping On Keeping On is a classic history of a life in letters.

A collection of Bennett’s diaries and essays, covering 2005 to 2015 Alan Bennett’s third collection of prose, Keeping On Keeping On, follows in the footsteps of the phenomenally successful Writing Home and Untold Stories."

Smut

The Shielding of Mrs Forbes Graham Forbes is a disappointment to his mother, who thinks that if he must have a wife, he should have done better. Though her own husband isn't all that satisfactory either. Still, this is Alan Bennett, so what is happening in the bedroom (and in lots of other places too) is altogether more startling, perhaps shocking, and ultimately more true to people's predilections. The Greening of Mrs Donaldson Mrs Donaldson is a conventional middle-class woman beached on the shores of widowhood after a marriage that had been much like many others: happy to begin with, then satisfactory and finally dull. But when she decides to take in two lodgers, her mundane life becomes much more stimulating...

Still, this is Alan Bennett, so what is happening in the bedroom (and in lots of other places too) is altogether more startling, perhaps shocking, and ultimately more true to people's predilections."

The History Boys

An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a fool. In Alan Bennett's screenplay, staff room rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose. Fox Searchlight Pictures, DNA and the BBC have joined forces to bring the National Theatre's award-winning production of The History Boys to the big screen, directed by Nicholas Hytner from a script adapted for the screen by Alan Bennett.

Fox Searchlight Pictures, DNA and the BBC have joined forces to bring the National Theatre's award-winning production of The History Boys to the big screen, directed by Nicholas Hytner from a script adapted for the screen by Alan Bennett."

A Life Like Other People's

FROM ONE OF BRITAIN'S GREATEST LIVING WRITERS AND THE AUTHOR OF THE UNCOMMON READER, A FAMILY MEMOIR AND UNIQUE WORK OF ART—A LIFE LIKE OTHER IS ALAN BENNETT AT HIS BEST 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.

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."

Rolling Home

This collection contains a full introduction from the author, with anecdotes and recollections of fliming at the time and looking back now. It includes: One Fine Day; All Day on the Sands; Our Winnie; Rolling Home; Marks; Say Something Happened; and Intensive Care.

The television plays included in this volume are Our Winnie, All Day on the Sands, One Fine Day, Marks, Say Something Happened, Rolling Home and Intensive Care. This volume also contains a new general introduction by Alan Bennett."

Two Kafka Plays

'You have to keep your ears open for Alan Bennett's Insurance Man. It had visual impact so powerful that you were in danger of missing some very good lines simply because nobody spoke them in close up; you had to catch them on the wing. And if there was one line that summed up both Bennett's play and Kafka's novel The Trial, which provided some of this framework, that line was "Just because you're the injured party, it doesn't mean you're not guilty".' GuardianKafka himself figures in these two brilliant scripts: one a hilarious comedy, the other a profound and searching drama. This edition includes an introduction by Alan Bennett.

' GuardianKafka himself figures in these two brilliant scripts: one a hilarious comedy, the other a profound and searching drama. This edition includes an introduction by Alan Bennett."

Point of View in Plays

This is the first book-length study of how point of view is manifested linguistically in dramatic texts. It examines such issues as how readers process the shifts in viewpoint that can occur within such texts. Using insights from cognitive linguistics, the book aims to explain how the analysis of point of view in drama can be undertaken, and how this is fruitful for understanding textual and discoursal effects in this genre. Following on from a consideration of existing frameworks for the analysis of point of view, a cognitive approach to deixis is suggested as being particularly profitable for explaining the viewpoint effects that can arise in dramatic texts. To expand on the large number of examples discussed throughout the book, the penultimate chapter consists of an extended analysis of a single play. This book is relevant to scholars in a range of areas, including linguistics, literary studies and cognitive science.

Short's (1996) diagram shows the discourse structure of a prototypical dramatic text but some plays will have more discourse levels, as Short himself points out. Alan Bennett's The Lady in the Van is an example of one such play."

Two Besides

** Ebook available for pre-order now -- released 8 July 2020 **Two brand-new monologues in the Talking Heads series, as seen on BBC1 and iPlayer 'Given the opportunity to revisit the characters from Talking Heads I've added a couple more, both of them ordinary women whom life takes by surprise. They just about end up on top and go on, but without quite knowing how. Still, they're in good company, and at least they've made it into print.' Alan Bennett's twelve Talking Heads are acknowledged masterworks by one of our most highly acclaimed writers. Some thirty years after the original six, Bennett has written Two Besides, a pair of monologues. Each, in its way, is a devastating portrait of grief. In An Ordinary Woman, a mother suffers the inevitable consequences when she makes life intolerable for herself and her family by falling for her own flesh and blood; while The Shrine tells the story behind a makeshift roadside shrine, introducing us to Lorna, bearing witness in her high-vis jacket, the bereft partner of a dedicated biker with a surprising private life. The two new Talking Heads were recorded for the BBC during the exceptional circumstances of coronavirus lockdown in the spring of 2020, directed by Nicholas Hytner and performed by Sarah Lancashire and Monica Dolan.The book contains a substantial preface by Nicholas Hytner and an introduction to each, by Alan Bennett.

The two new Talking Heads were recorded for the BBC during the exceptional circumstances of coronavirus lockdown in the spring of 2020, directed by Nicholas Hytner and performed by Sarah Lancashire and Monica Dolan.The book contains a ..."

A Private Function

The Old Crowd A Private Function Prick Up Your Ears 102 Boulevard Haussmann The Madness of King George Starring characters as diverse as George III, Marcel Proust, Joe Orton, and a pig called Betty, Alan Bennett's masterful work for the screen gives as much enjoyment in the reading as it did in the viewing. This classic collection contains a new essay by Alan Bennett, besides the original introductions to A Private Function, Prick Up Your Ears and The Madness of King George. Two companion volumes of Alan Bennett's TV plays are published as Me, I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Rolling Home.

This classic collection contains a new essay by Alan Bennett, besides the original introductions to A Private Function, Prick Up Your Ears and The Madness of King George."

Alan Bennett Plays 2

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.

This second volume of plays by Alan Bennett includes his two Kafka plays, one an hilarious comedy, the other a profound and searching drama."

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature

THE WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANION TO CONTEMPORARY BRITISH AND IRISH LITERATURE An insightful guide to the exploration of modern British and Irish literature The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature is a must-have guide for anyone hoping to navigate the world of new British and Irish writing. Including modern authors and poets from the 1960s through to the 21st century, the Companion provides a thorough overview of contemporary poetry, fiction, and drama by some of the most prominent and noteworthy writers. Seventy-three comprehensive chapters focus on individual authors as well as such topics as Englishness and identity, contemporary Science Fiction, Black writing in Britain, crime fiction, and the influence of globalization on British and Irish Literature. Written in four parts, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature includes comprehensive examinations of individual authors, as well as a variety of themes that have come to define the contemporary period: ethnicity, gender, nationality, and more. A thorough guide to the main figures and concepts in contemporary literature from Britain and Ireland, this two-volume set: Includes studies of notable figures such as Seamus Heaney and Angela Carter, as well as more recently influential writers such as Zadie Smith and Sarah Waters. Covers topics such as LGBT fiction, androgyny in contemporary British Literature, and post-Troubles Northern Irish Fiction Features a broad range of writers and topics covered by distinguished academics Includes an analysis of the interplay between individual authors and the major themes of the day, and whether an examination of the latter enables us to appreciate the former. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature provides essential reading for students as well as academics seeking to learn more about the history and future direction of contemporary British and Irish Literature.

In The Lady in the Van , Bennett has written his own self‐portrait of the artist, deeply self‐conscious of the ethical ... The other Alan Bennett is the good citizen who is motivated partly by liberal guilt to perform this act of charity ..."

LRB Diary for 2023

Celebrating 40 years of Alan Bennett's diary in the London Review of Books."

Six Poets: Hardy to Larkin

Writers like to elude their public, lead them a bit of a dance. They take them down untrodden paths, land them in unknown country where they have to ask for directions. In this personal anthology, Alan Bennett has chosen over seventy poems by six well-loved poets, discussing the writers and their verse in his customary conversational style through anecdote, shrewd appraisal and spare but telling biographical detail. Ranging from hidden treasures to famous poems, this is a collection for the beginner and the expert alike. Speaking with candour about his own reactions to the work, Alan Bennett creates profound and witty portraits of Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, John Betjeman, W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice and Philip Larkin, all the more enjoyable for being in his own particular voice. Anybody writing poetry in the thirties had somehow to come to terms with Auden. Auden, you see, had got a head start on the other poets. He'd got into the thirties first, like someone taking over the digs.

Ranging from hidden treasures to famous poems, this is a collection for the beginner and the expert alike."

The Habit of Art

Alan Bennett's first play since the runaway international success of The History Boys.

Alan Bennett's first play since the runaway international success of The History Boys."

The Bloomsbury Companion to Stylistics

This Bloomsbury Companion provides an overview of stylistics with a detailed outline of the scope and history of the discipline, as well as its key areas of research. The main research methods and approaches within the field are presented with a detailed overview and then illustrated with a chapter of unique new research by a leading scholar in the field. The Companion also features in-depth explorations of current research areas in stylistics in the form of new studies by established researchers in the field. The broad interdisciplinary scope of stylistics is reflected in the wide array of approaches taken to the linguistic study of texts drawing on traditions from linguistics, literary theory, literary criticism, critical theory and narratology, and in the diverse group of internationally recognised contributors.

Mcintyre, D. (2005), 'Logic, reality and mind style in Alan Bennett's The Lady in the Van ', Journal of Literary ... Wells, H. G. (1911), 'The country of the blind', in The Country of the Blind and Other Stories , 536–68, London: Nelson."

The Uncommon Reader

The uncommon reader is none other than HM The Queen, who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. Soon, she is engrossed with her new pastime, but it makes others uneasy.

The uncommon reader is none other than HM The Queen, who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. Soon, she is engrossed with her new pastime, but it makes others uneasy."

Alan Bennett Plays 1

This collection of Alan Bennett's work includes his first play and West End hit, Forty Years On, as well as Getting On, Habeus Corpus, and Enjoy.Forty Years On'Alan Bennett's most gloriously funny play ... a brilliant, youthful perception of a nation in decline, as seen through the eyes of a home-grown school play ... a classic.' Daily MailGetting OnWinner of the Evening Standard Best Comedy Award in 1971, Getting on is an account of a middle-aged Labour MP, so self-absorbed that he remains blind to the fact that his wife is having an affair with the handyman, his mother-in-law in dying, his son is getting ready to leave home, his best friend thinks him a fool and that to everyone who comes into contact with him he is a self-esteeming joke.Habeus Corpus'After two elegiac comedies about the decline of old England, Mr Bennett has now written a gorgeously vulgar but densely plotted facre that is a downright celebration of sex and the human body ... a combination of hurtling action with verbal brilliance.' GuardianEnjoyEnjoy uncannily foresaw the attitudes to English working-class life now enshrined in themeparks. 'The classic tug in Bennett between childhod Yorkshire and intellectual sophistication has never been better, or more daringly expressed.' Observer

This collection of Alan Bennett's work includes his first play and West End hit, Forty Years On, as well as Getting On, Habeus Corpus, and Enjoy.Forty Years On'Alan Bennett's most gloriously funny play ... a brilliant, youthful perception ..."

House Arrest

Timothy is on probation. It's a strange word—something that happens to other kids, to delinquents, not to kids like him. And yet, he is under house arrest for the next year. He must check in weekly with a probation officer and a therapist, and keep a journal for an entire year. And mostly, he has to stay out of trouble. But when he must take drastic measures to help his struggling family, staying out of trouble proves more difficult than Timothy ever thought it would be. By turns touching and funny, and always original, House Arrest is a middlegrade novel in verse about one boy's path to redemption as he navigates life with a sick brother, a grieving mother, and one tough probation officer.

By turns touching and funny, and always original, House Arrest is a middlegrade novel in verse about one boy's path to redemption as he navigates life with a sick brother, a grieving mother, and one tough probation officer."

Hymn and Cocktail Sticks

It's a dwindling band; old-fashioned and of a certain age, you can pick us out at funerals and memorial services because we can sing the hymns without the book. Alan Bennett writes: In 2001 the Medici Quartet commissioned the composer George Fenton to write them a piece commemorating their thirtieth anniversary. George Fenton appeared in my play Forty Years On and has written music for many of my plays since, and he asked me to collaborate on the commission. Hymn was the result. First performed at the Harrogate Festival in August 2001, it's a series of memoirs with music. Besides purely instrumental passages for the quartet, many of the speeches are under-scored, incorporating some of the hymns and music I remember from my childhood and youth. The text includes both words and music. Hymn is coupled with Cocktail Sticks, an oratorio without music that revisits some of the themes and conversations of Alan Bennett's memoir A Life Like Other People's. A son talks to his dead father as his mother yearns for a different life. It's funny, tender and sad. The pinnacle of my social life is a scrutty bit of lettuce and tomato and some tinned salmon. Mind you, I read in Ideal Home that if you mix tinned salmon with this soft cheese you can make it into one of those moussy things. Shove a bit of lemon on it and it looks really classy.

The text includes both words and music. Hymn is coupled with Cocktail Sticks, an oratorio without music that revisits some of the themes and conversations of Alan Bennett's memoir A Life Like Other People's."

The Clothes They Stood Up in

From Alan Bennett, the author ofThe Madness of King George, come two stories about the strange nature of possessions...or the lack of them. In the nationally bestselling novelThe 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,” whichThe Village Voicecalled “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.

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."

Talking Heads 2

Characterized by the author's understatement, observation and knowing irony, these six Alan Bennett monologues were written for the second BBC1 series of Talking Heads, the first having been transmitted 11 years earlier, in 1987.

Characterized by the author's understatement, observation and knowing irony, these six Alan Bennett monologues were written for the second BBC1 series of Talking Heads, the first having been transmitted 11 years earlier, in 1987."

The Complete Talking Heads

Two series of monologues written for BBC television and broadcast in 1988 and 1998, along with 'A woman of no importance', an earlier monologue first televised in 1982.

Two series of monologues written for BBC television and broadcast in 1988 and 1998, along with 'A woman of no importance', an earlier monologue first televised in 1982."

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