Alan Bennett looking back aged 90

He would not like the phrase – and nor do I – but Alan Bennett is a ‘national treasure’.  Last night, aged 90 and in a wheelchair, he looked back on his life and body of work.  It brought back many memories.

Forty Years On with John Gielgud would be up there with Shadowlands as one of my five most memorable plays.

It’s a clever pastiche of Britain in the 1960s with Albion House, a decaying school with a bumbling platitudinous headmaster (played by John Gielgud), clearly symbolic of  national decline. As ever with Alan Bennett it is leavened with wit.

There is also a satire of John Buchan:

“Is he sane?”

“The second sanest man in Europe but, like many, crosses that narrow divide between lunacy and insanity“.

It had a rerun with Paul Eddington but it was “of its time”.

Alan Bennett has continued to turn out quality plays book and TV dramas.

One of my favourite of the latter was An Englishman Abroad – a drama about Guy Burgess escaping to Moscow and his life there. It starred that wonderful actor Alan Bates.

The History Boys reprised Forty Years On and was both a critical and commercial success.

If one had a criticism of him it might be that – for all his ever-present wit from Beyond The Fringe to the present day – he can be superficial.