We don’t see it, and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past.
ALAN BENNETTOur perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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The days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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f they’d been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn’t have known they were born if they’d not towed the line!
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Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”
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It’s subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
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I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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Over the years Miss Shepherd was visited by a succession of social workers so the character in the play is a composite figure.
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However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
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What 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.
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
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To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
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Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
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The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.
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But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
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We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
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And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.’ ‘But this is History. Distance yourselves.
ALAN BENNETT






