Alan Bennett, Alan Bennett : Diaries 1980 - 1990 (Spoken Word CD)

This is a delight. Even better than reading the diaries, is hearing Bennett narrate them with his wonderful dry laconic voice. Full of charm and humour and insight. Covers all kinds of minute celebrity style gossip, to quite deep insights into his life and popular events of the time. Includes the story of Miss Shepard who lived in a van in his drive for over a decade. Also includes thoughts on people like Phillip Larkin and Peter Cook. He writes and speaks wonderfully, with such layered detail about the North during the war and beyond, and that lower middle class working class culture that has taken up much of the focus of his dramatic writing. Fabulous.