Untold Stories

Charles McGrath

His book is also preternaturally alert to what Bennett, in discussing his favorite paintings, calls "the glow," by which he means not just light but the small graceful touches, the odd details that catch the corner of the eye — the accidental vantage point, he says, that is also a shortcut to the back of the brain.
— The New York Times

Michael Dirda

"At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like 'I bet Tom Stoppard doesn't have to do this' or 'There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.' " There you have the glory of Alan Bennett: You don't have to be a famous playwright to know just how he feels.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

Bennett has been known to British audiences of radio, television, stage and screen for decades. In the United States, he's best known as the screenwriter of The Madness of King George and, perhaps, for his experiences with Miss Shepherd, an indigent woman who set up a succession of vans in his front yard for 15 years. Now he returns with a shaggy collection of autobiographical sketches, diary entries, considerations of art, architecture and other authors, as well as an account of his bout with colon cancer. Returning to the precincts of his straitlaced, working-class British background, Bennett reveals a lost world whose influence and mores have trailed him his entire life. He revisits the Leeds that he knew in the 1940s, where he was first exposed to music and theater, and where his parents, both shy and retiring people, set lack of pretension as the highest value. While he plays the old crank who is put upon by the world as it is, Bennett reveals an eye for detail and a feel for the complexity of human interactions. And though he laments at length his own late maturation-physical, sexual and intellectual-and lack of sophistication, he shows himself to have achieved a measure of happiness. B&w photos. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In addition to his many theatrical talents, Bennett (The Clothes They Stood Up In) is a fine storyteller. Using concentric circles rather than a linear pattern to tell his family history, he shapes his subjects' lives together into the story of a people, a place, and a time. Bennett's mother had a tendency toward depression and his account of her hospitalizations and his father's tenderness toward her offers poignant insights into their marriage. Bennett also offers a contemporary insider's look at England's theater and movie industries. His memories of fellow actors Peter Cook and Dudley Moore are wry, witty, and honest to a fault. And he gives candid responses to the success of his most recent play, The History Boys, which opened to great critical acclaim at London's Royal National Theatre in 2004 and will open on Broadway in April 2006 (to coincide with the publication of this book). Recommended for all public libraries with large autobiographical sections and all academic libraries with popular reading sections. [Untold Stories appears 12 years after another of Bennett's collections of autobiographical writings, Writing Home.-Ed.]-Pam Kingsbury, Florence, AL Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An eclectic, entertaining and shelf-bending collection of essays, memoirs, introductions, diaries and commentary from the noted English actor, playwright and art-lover. In his introduction, Bennett (Writing Home, 1995, etc.) alludes to the colon cancer he battled in the late 1990s, and he concludes this massive and moving anthology with an essay about that experience-one of the strongest of many strong pieces. He quips, "Sometimes I felt that more people had seen the inside of my bum than had seen some productions at the National Theatre." This appealing self-deprecation is a hallmark of Bennett's prose, including his opening essay, a long piece about a number of his relatives-but with a sharp focus on the mental deterioration of his mother. Bennett also writes about his first awareness that he was gay (including a touching moment with his father, who asks, "You're not one of them, are you?"). Bennett includes segments from his diary (1996-2004), with comments on the deaths of many of his friends and coevals-among them, John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, John Schlesinger and Alan Bates. He comments, as well, on the death of Princess Di, 9/11, the Iraq War (which he despises). There are a couple of very compelling sections about the plays he's written (for stage, radio, film and television), and some essays about another of his loves-paintings. (In his diary, he chronicles visits to galleries all over the world.) There's also an interesting text of a speech in which he identifies four paintings that ought to hang in every English school. Bennett loves the poetry of Philip Larkin, and that poet's name and words pop up frequently in these pages. Among the best pieces is "Staring Out of theWindow," a brief, lucid essay about writing. Another very strong and troubling essay deals with a physical assault he suffered in 1992. An informed mind and heart, a generous spirit-these are the human qualities that emerge on virtually every page of this splendid collection.