A very slight book ( I read it on a short bus journey of less than 30 minutes). Although I love Alan Bennett’s diaries I’m not entirely sure that this was deserving of a publication on its own. It’s billed as the Pandemic Diaries but considering, for the best part of two years, we lived with some sort of restriction, Bennett glosses over so much (I don’t know how much of his diaries have been edited down or even if he writes them every day). May. Remember as a child at Halliday Place in Armley when Dad was rubbing his face with a (sometimes) ill-smelling towel his face used to squeak.

House Arrest: Diary selections from the pandemic year, House Arrest: Diary selections from the pandemic year,

I never met the queen except once as part of an assembly line and I’m glad as I would have been cripplingly shy. For me she was a creature of myth and I was happy for her to remain so, my notion of her set out in a speech made by the queen herself in ‘The Uncommon Reader’: In one of the longest interviews he ever gave, the Friends actor confided that he was ‘a dark soul’ who dreamed of meeting the right woman and starting a family Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth Photo in the Guardian of a homemade sign at the entrance to Malham village telling or rather entreating the hordes of tourists to go home. In our Yorkshire village 20 miles or so away the car park is full and the place far busier than on a normal Sunday. So far from social distancing some of the visitors practically link arms. Still, it makes a change from brawling over toilet rolls. August, Yorkshire. Write it and it happens. In the monologue The Shrine I wrote for production during Covid, a biker travelling down the A65 dies in a crash and I imagined incurious sheep gathering to look at the scene of the accident.For much of 1983 and 1984, Frankie Goes to Hollywood dominated the pop landscape so totally that... ★★★★✩

House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries (Main) by Alan Bennett - WHSmith

Whilst only brief in length, 'House Arrest' does provide a lovely snapshot of what life was like for the aging Alan Bennett through the pandemic, told in a manner that only he can There are many depressing items of news in today’s Observer but the most lowering is that, on account of his support for Brexit, Ian Botham is thought likely to be raised to the peerage.March. HMQ pictured in the paper at an investiture wearing gloves, presumably as a precaution against Coronavirus. But not just gloves; these are almost gauntlets. I hope they're not the thin end of a precautionary wedge lest Her Majesty end up swathed in protective get-up such as is worn at the average crime scene. As an over-70, I am officially exhorted to remain isolated and indoors which is to say that my usual going on now has governmental endorsement. The York Theatre Royal’s tour of The Habit of Art, the play about Auden and Britten that did well last year and was due to be revived for a festival in New York, has had to be cancelled. I write to the cast apologising and saying that one person who would not be washing his hands every five minutes is WH Auden.