I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
ALAN BENNETTI’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
ALAN BENNETTWere we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
ALAN BENNETTThe days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
ALAN BENNETTHis writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls.
ALAN BENNETTA photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It’s not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember.
ALAN BENNETTThe trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
ALAN BENNETTOne of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
ALAN BENNETTWhat she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
ALAN BENNETTOf course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
ALAN BENNETTReading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
ALAN BENNETTWhy is it always the “intelligent” people who are socialists?
ALAN BENNETTOur father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
ALAN BENNETTA book, as it were, closes the book.
ALAN BENNETTI’ve never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
ALAN BENNETTStandards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
ALAN BENNETTThe liturgy is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.
ALAN BENNETT