Prescient

Unbelievably predictable. Alan Bennett puts into words just how prescient he is about most things.

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Enchanting and wickedly observant

Just loved it. He writes so well with an eye for minutiae, gently poking fun but never maliciously. It works very well as an audio book because no matter where you pick up and leave off or forget where you were when you fell asleep (as I do when listening in the night), every section stands alone and stands being heard several times over, like a really good piece of music. Am now going to search for more by him.

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3 people found this helpful

nice

Love Alan B, mostly for his Northern niceties and this lived up to expectations.
spoiler alert; as you might expect in an autobiography by an older chap, an old person dies in every chapter.

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1 person found this helpful

What's not to Like.

An enjoyable meander through Alan Bennett's diaries, read by Alan himself, Not sure I agreed with some of his left wing views but nonetheless they were very entertaining.

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Brilliant

Absolutely loved listening to Alan telling his diaries notes he’s got such a dry humour and tells it how it is

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Simply Brilliant

Alan Bennett has the ability to describe quite ordinary things in a way that is truly entertaining. But these diaries are not just ordinary events there are some fascinating personal accounts of an interesting life. I enjoyed everything about this book and my only regret is that it is over.

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Time has altered my view of these diaries

I read all these diaries on their initial publication/s. Ive loved all of Bennetts works and his diaries, and enjoyed his comments, insights and jokes about his world and ours.
But this time round i was struck by how repetitive his political comments are through the years, not because he holds to any recognized political ideology, but suggesting experience hasn’t taught him much.
He remains inured to some of the vicious reality of experience of ‘the poor’ (as he would have it in his victorian fashion) preferring to see them either as the great uneducated (unwashed), or as the great ‘hard done by’… rarely wondering why they don’t always empathize with the criminals and the takers of society as he suggests he does.
I hesitate to label him naive because he is clearly well informed, and observation is after all his stock in trade. But one does sense he would easily have been fodder for the KGB in a slightly earlier era, swallowing the ‘imperialist bullies’ line and ‘we are for the people’ nonsense of the USSR. I am sure he would have been a ‘Cambridge Spy’.
That he seems still to regard every country, culture and political system as better than ours, in the face of all contrary evidence from those who experience these systems first hand is depressing and undermines his legitimate observations on our many failings.
After a series of anti-police rants (based on very little actual knowledge of incident) he is startled by his own experience of a decent, engaged, empathetic police officer. That he acknowledges his apparent prejudice here is in his favour, that he should get so far in life and with all his education and skills and yet retain these silly prejudices, when he so often rightly identifies and ridicules such unwarranted perspectives in others is a bit sad.
Im afraid i also found his constant negativity rather repetitive, maybe its me. I have matured and maintain a more positive outlook than i did as a youth. At least a more sanguine one. Dear Allan, you are a great playwright and a man of letters whose insights have brought us a great deal to chew on as it were, but i do feel inclined to say ‘cheer up, it might never happen’.

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