Keeping On Keeping On

Following the phenomenally successful Writing Home and Untold Stories, Keeping On Keeping On contains Bennett's diaries 2005 to 2015, reflecting on a decade that saw four premieres at the National Theatre, a West End double-bill transfer, and the films of The History Boys and The Lady in the Van. There's a provocative sermon against private education, a passionate defence of the public library, a radio play and a screenplay, introductions and eulogies.

An unforgettable record of life according to the inimitable Alan Bennett.

Cleverer and funnier than any one person has a right to be. -- John Carey Sunday Times
Our most subversive playwright... and able to make the world dance with a single word. On every page there is a phrase to make you smile, poetry disguised as comedy. -- Craig Brown Mail on Sunday
Fire lit. Hot, thick toast. Coffee. Reading the inimitable Mr Bennett. Happiness. -- Nigel Slater
Confirms his reputation as one of the sharpest and funniest writers in the English language. -- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst Spectator
Our greatest living writer. -- Roger Lewis The Times
Screamingly funny. -- Observer Miranda Sawyer
An endlessly rewarding read by a man for all seasons and one who occupies a unique place in our culture and affections -- Liz Thomson The Arts Desk
Few diarists could offer such a consistently funny and touching authorial voice as Bennett. Long may he keep on keeping on. -- Ben Lawrence Daily Telegraph
There is no other writer, certainly none from any other era or nation, quite like Alan Bennett, and having this much more of his work is an uncovenanted blessing. -- David Sexton Evening Standard
There is not a dull or uninteresting page here ... teddy bear he may be but he has a tiger's teeth The Herald
This latest anthology of diaries and essays is a beautiful, humane and honest collection of reflections -- Rachel Reeves
Every piece here conveys the sense of an idiosyncratic and cussed mind, alive and open to the world -- Joe Moran Guardian
The literary equivalent of a warm cup of Horlicks spiked lavishly with whisky Metro, Books of the Year 2016
[A] lavish miscellany ... appreciative, nostalgic and also hugely funny. Prospect
'Alan Bennett, with his combination of pitiless observation and gentle understatement, is perhaps the best-loved of English writers alive today Sunday Telegraph
Intelligent, educated, engaging, humane, self-aware, cantankerous and irresistibly funny -- John Carey Sunday Times
Alan Bennett's work, which stands as one of the major achievements across several genres in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, demands the very best of us: not our praise but our attention. -- Ian Samson TLS

Alan Bennett has been one of our leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s. His television series Talking Heads has become a modern-day classic, as have many of his works for stage including Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Question of Attribution, The Madness of George III (together with the Oscar-nominated screenplay The Madness of King George), and an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. At the National Theatre, London, The History Boys won numerous awards including Evening Standard and Critics' Circle awards for Best Play, an Olivier for Best New Play and the South Bank Award. On Broadway, The History Boys won five New York Drama Desk Awards, four Outer Critcs' Circle Awards, a New York Drama Critics' Award, a New York Drama League Award and six Tony's. The Habit of Art opened at the National in 2009. His collection of prose, Untold Stories, won the PEN/Ackerley Prize for autobiography, 2006. The Uncommon Reader was published in 2007 and Smut in 2011. The film of The Lady in the Van, starring Maggie Smith, was released in 2015 with the tie-in edition spending several weeks on bestseller lists.

A concise collection of Alan Bennett's latest diaries - and more. Following the phenomenally successful Writing Home and Untold Stories, Keeping On Keeping On contains Bennett's diaries 2005 to 2015, reflecting on a decade that saw four premieres at the National Theatre, a West End double-bill transfer, and the films of The History Boys and The Lady in the Van . There's a provocative sermon against private education, a passionate defence of the public library, a radio play and a screenplay, introductions and eulogies. An unforgettable record of life according to the inimitable Alan Bennett.

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