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Private Notes
Alan Bennett remembers his television drama about a chance encounter in Moscow in 1958.
Alan Bennett's first television play, directed in black and white in 1972 by Stephen Frears. A charming comedy set in Edwardian Yorkshire, it follows a cycling club on a day out. A fantastic cast features Brian Glover, who was still a professional wrestler at the time, and Paul Shane, who was then a club comic.
An elderly couple from Leeds retire to live on the seaside in Morecambe, but cannot adjust to their new surroundings.
Arthur Dodsworth has recently retired. He lives alone except for his budgie and memories of his late wife Winnie. One afternoon his nap is interrupted by the doorbell; his former secretary, Peggy Prothero, has come to visit. A brash, charmless woman who seems to take no pleasure in anything but putting people down, Miss Prothero wants to fill her old boss in on all the changes that have taken place at work since he left. Dodsworth isn't very curious, and as the visit wears on it puts a little strain on his politeness and patience. Miss Prothero doesn't enjoy it much either, but lingers on as there's a bombshell she wants to drop. The docketing system Dodsworth introduced thirty years earlier, which revolutionised the firm, has been scrapped by her adored new boss Mr Skinner. The crowning achievement of Dodsworth's career has just become obsolete, and she wants to tell him all about it.
Winnie is a mentally handicapped woman who lives with her elderly mother (Cora) and aunt (Ida). They visit the cemetery where Winnie's father is buried. Also in the cemetery are two art students, one of whom (Liz) asks if she can take a photograph of the three women. She takes it while they are not prepared, making them look ridiculous (Cora is putting her make-up on, Winnie is staring at the camera with her mouth open). Cora is angry, and Liz takes another of them properly posed. But she enters the first photograph for a competition, where it wins a prize.
Award-winning one-woman drama starring Patricia Routledge. What do Miss Schofield and the gang find to talk about at their table in the canteen? Yesterday they were discussing the rash Pauline Lucas's mother keeps getting on her elbows. Miss Schofield puts her social success down to that fact that she doesn't talk about herself, and she laughs of course, she always laughs.
It is 1958, and in a squalid flat in Moscow, double-agent Guy Burgess is hiding from the world. When he is visited by actress Coral Browne, he is overjoyed to see someone from his former life in England. Starved for information, Burgess interrogates her about English society gossip and cajoles her into taking home measurements for a new pinstripe suit from his London tailor.
A dye worker, dismissed from his job because of a suspicious rash, finds himself caught up in the nightmarish bureaucracy of an insurance company, one of whose employees is Franz Kafka.
In the setting of the Crown Hotel in Harrogate, with its leisure breaks and conference facilities, Alan Bennett reflects on the subject of class.
In 1916 author Marcel Proust is leading a reclusive life in Paris. He hires a quartet of musicians and befriends one of them, a wounded serviceman.
Film version of Alan Bennett's National Theatre hit, directed by John Schlesinger. A witty examination of the thesis that appearances can be deceptive. Sir Anthony Blunt leads a double life - interrogations by MI5 interspersed with visits to the palace where, on one memorable occasion, he is surprised by Her Majesty. How much does she know about him and, as the Fifth Man asks, what's she really like?
Alan Bennett is very candid relating childhood tales and life views through his then (and now) interpretation of artwork.
