Talking Heads

Alan Bennett was educated at Leeds Modern School and Exeter College, Oxford, where he read history. While doing postgraduate research he began to perform in cabaret, appearing first on the stage with the Oxford Theatre Group revue Better Late at Edinburgh in 1959. The following year he collaborated with Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore to put together the revue Beyond the Fringe which opened in Edinburgh and subsequently in the West End and on Broadway. Bennett’s first stage play, Forty Years On, played for more than a year in the West End. Subsequent plays included Getting On, Habeas Corpus, and The Old Country, as well as the television play An Englishman Abroad. Alan Bennett’s other best known works include his adaptation of The Wind in the Willows for the National Theatre, The Madness of George III (and also for the National and subsequently an Oscar-winning film), and two series of the monologs Talking Heads. His collection of diary entries, essays and reviews, Writing Home, was Book of the Year in 1994. Alan Bennett has made many recordings for the BBC, including The Lady in the Van, which he adapted for the stage and the cinema. His play The History Boys received six Tony Awards, and was adapted for the cinema that same year. Among Alan Bennett’s more recent work are the stage plays The Habit of Art, People, and Cocktail Sticks, and the novella Smut.