But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.
ALAN BENNETTOver the years Miss Shepherd was visited by a succession of social workers so the character in the play is a composite figure.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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And one of the historian’s jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be… even on the Holocaust.
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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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My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn’t normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge.
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A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
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Clichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.
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Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground.
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Of course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
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I think the writer’s quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I’d have thought, slightly more risky.
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There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I’m conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.
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Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
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Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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