AUDIO: Alan Bennett: Diary From the Pandemic Year 

When ever I need my compass resetting and a bit grounding, half an hour listening to AB does the trick.

I decorated his London house many years ago, squeezing past the lady in the van. A lovely man.

I can’t express how this has made me feel. Just to say, AB is my hero, and to hear his voice again (as a new recording) fills me with love and warmth. Icon.

Arguably one of Britains Greatest writers..

AB is always uplifting, even when addressing worrying concerns. It's his consciousness and personality, and pacing and irony that always enriches.

Alan Bennett never disappoints. Thank you!

AB's LRB diary update, my life has become enriched again, thank you so much.

I’m so happy that we get another instalment of AB’s diary. I was so disappointed when we didn’t get the audio of 2020 back in January, so this was a lovely surprising gift. Thank you Mr Bennett. Keep safe & well!

Alan Bennett always a joy to hear his voice

Back in my youth never saw the interest in Alan Bennett, then a few years ago I heard him on the radio and thought forking brilliant. Since then brought books of his on both formats as I think nowt can beat a real book, I'm than hooked now that even introduced him to friends and associates who have worked for me within the advocacy and mental health to the extent of giving them the book Keeping On Keeping On.

It’s so lovely to hearAB again - sanity is restored for a moment 🙏🏻

Alan Bennett is obviously an icon and literary treasure, well earned. Having been born in Ashton Under Lyne and growing up in Staybridge I was reefed out of this existence at the age of ten to live with my parents in Victoria Australia. Mr Bennett’s soothing, unexcited tones bring much of my family life flooding back to me. Northerners can sound like they are killing each other, but I’ve always found them to be the most gentle people. You just have to gain an ear to them. Oddly enough, having left this life behind, I was determined to lose my northern accent. I liked the radio news announcers voices but fear I have ended up with a curious nowhere accent. I’m not sure why this felt such a shameful thing that I needed to lose it, but I am unashamedly a norther British person. I can only think it was an immaturity on my part. I never really perfected received English and I never fully embraced Australian mannerisms. In my life I have been fortunate to have travelled a lot. It seems to me that wherever I go, I leave something of me behind and have come to understand that I prefer to be considered as a global person. But I will always have a deep love of being English, and everything associated with it. Many years ago, I’m now almost sixty nine years old, I came to understand that lines on a map are divisive and opportunistic. It’s great if you ended up in a country like North America, but unfair if you were born into a sandbox with precious few resources. How one or the other accidents of birth makes you superior or inferior eludes me. I love my English culture but I would be much happier being a global citizen along with everyone else. I’m sure many will think me naive, and perhaps they are right. Life’s journey is a fascinating thing and I consider myself to be fortunate indeed. Australia is my now my home and I love it deeply and feel fortunate to have been able to live here so long, but other parts of me reside elsewhere. To some extent I feel a little torn, perhaps shattered, but in a good way. Following a catastrophic car crash in 1982 I have begun to feel that the universe Is pulverising me back into molecules, stardust, and it alright because I know I belong there too. Who knew that decomposition could be so agreeable ! I am left with ongoing severe pain and we’re it not for that, how who I measure how exquisite my life is. I am grateful for my life and it experiences, it has taught me much but the cost was high. It has ever been thus.

300 years from now, this will be seen as being as important as Defoe's "Journal of the Plague Year", or Pepys' "Diary".

Could listen forever. Chin up , chuck.

Wonderful anecdote about the genesis of An Englishman Abroad! And spot on regarding the interlopers in Graham Greene’s writing. All the best to you, Mr. Bennett.

a wonderful kind soul with a humour as dry as the safe room on noah,s Ark. a gift to have lived in his life time thanks ALAN ,love and peace j Vincent Edwards

Thanks thanks and ever thanks ....dear Mr Bennet

As always, a joy to listen to. Such a wonderful man.

Oh how I love how he describes his hands! 🥰

Always grateful to access the treasure of AB.

Thank you Alan, a joy as always x

Ah what a wonderful start to my Sunday

The sanest man in the world.

one word for this wonderful gentlemen: PRICELESS!!

Such a great author. My favourite watch Alan Bennett at the BBC and Talking Heads...the original ones not the remakes which weren't great and a waste of time, in my miserable opinion, but glad that Mr Bennett liked them and badly needed funds were raised. :)

I have such admiration for AB Fortunes of War excellent!!!!!

This is what I need! Absolutely amazing, thank you!

What a comforting voice. What intelligence.

Amazingly, it looks like I have stumbled on this on the day it appears to have been uploaded. I never cease to feel joy as well as some strange sense of relief when I read or hear A B talking. Despite me not knowing about some of the literary things he refers to, whatever he says about the stuff I know about just sounds right - "speaks to me", to borrow a Quaker expression. I've experienced this kind of response ever since, as an unsure, conflicted gay teenager living in a Yorkshire mining village I saw the broadcast of his "Me, I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf". PS And I've only just remembered - another coincidence - that the play-reading group I am in has just finished A Private Function.

Dear Mr. Bennett - dear Alan, within a few phrases you have written my physical condition and sorrow; 'Arturitis', reduced mobility and dependence on pain relief. One pharmacist years ago addressed a crowded shop "Where's the gentleman with a bowel complaint?". Many thanks for years of writing and consolation; now I can't read. Wendy.

The rich genius and brilliant sarcastic humor of the legendary Alan Bennett, the sole survivor of the Beyond The Fringe team of the equally talented Englishman…Moore, Cook and Miller…all gone now…and…what a loss it will be…when…the time comes 😔

what a great voice. a brilliant speaker i just listened to Libraries😎👍✅☮️✌️

An amazing man wonderful upload many thanks

A tattoo of Mr. Bennett "also makes for an amusing conversation during intercourse" which suggests "the intercourse might be less than fervent, my name in itself something of a detumescent". OMG. Hilarious!

Thanks for uploading.

Wow ❤️❤️❤️ AB! Tysm! Blessings all, Nashville, TN ✌️🙏🏼✝️

A revisit of talking heads is a exciting prospect..I need Google this..I have the DVD of the 2 originals that has a extra disc of Bennet monologues not unlike this.

Why hasn't Alan Bennett received the OM. It's hard to imagine any Brit more deserving.

Superb!

I wonder what the part in Dinnerladies was? (perhaps Duncan Preston's dad, eventually played by Eric Sykes)

This is good and very funny in some parts

Talking of Graham Greene and his vanity... "his frequent rare interviews". Ouch!

Oh, thank you!

Wonderful surprise

Love this guy 💕

Consumption was definitely the scourge of my father's family in Cavan, Ireland. His great grandmother, Sarah Clinton died at the age of 37, shortly after giving birth to her tenth child. So, probably as much exhaustion, as the TB. His father's uncle, Fr. Peter, died of it. Then it afflicted those ten children taking his uncle Nicholas at 16, his Uncle T.P., for whom he was partly named, at 26 in the Argentine where he had sought medical exile, and again his aunt Margaret, aged 30. Later, uncles Justin and Ulick would die about 50 from heart attacks. His aunt Angela, whom he regarded as a his true mother in a complicated two-sides-of-the-one-street setup, successfully survived all the ailments of the time, and lived to be almost 78. Unfortunately, on the way to the post office for her pension, she got to the traffic lights on the fast moving road, thinking they were still in her favour. They'd actually changed just as she stepped and driver making a quick get away, and with the low lying winter sun in his eyes, never saw her and she was run down. Forgive me. I add all that not to make everyone depressed, but AB has me in reflective mood.

And so we go on.........

Just bought writing home .

Always very entertaining and incredibly listenable - but he sounds very frail now. Will there be a 2023 diary?

The grass is emptier now.

Talking Heads wouldn’t be much without the actor’s talents; just words on a page, really.

An Englishman abroard cannot be a true story in regards measuring a bespoke suit. Perhaps she sent Guy a couple of shirts. Alan should have done some research.

TOO QUIET.

Sad to hear him becoming a miserable old curmudgeon

I grew up in Guildford. @devereuxmatthew