Keeping On Keeping On

Author(s): Alan Bennett

Gay Male & Bi Biography/Memoir

A collection of Bennett's diaries and essays, covering 2005 to 2015 Alan Bennett's third collection of prose, Keeping On Keeping On, follows in the footsteps of the phenomenally successful Writing Home and Untold Stories. Bringing together the hilarious, revealing, and lucidly intelligent writing of one of England's best-known literary figures, Keeping On Keeping On contains Bennett's diaries from 2005 to 2015--with everything from his much celebrated essays to his irreverent comic pieces and reviews--reflecting on a decade that saw four major theater premieres and the films of The History Boys and The Lady in the Van. A chronicle of one of the most important literary careers of the twentieth century, Keeping On Keeping On is a classic history of a life in letters.

November 2017


Product Information

Alan Bennett's hugely enjoyable and insightful diaries from the last ten years - a Sunday Times bestseller

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 * Is 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 * 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 the stage. One of the National Theatre's most successful productions ever, The History Boys won numerous awards including Evening Standard and Critics' Circle awards for Best Play, an Olivier for the Best New Play and the South Bank Award. His collection of prose Writing Home was a number one bestseller. Untold Stories won the PEN/Ackerley Prize for autobiography, 2006. Recent works of fiction are The Uncommon Reader and Smut: Two Unseemly Stories. The film of The Lady in the Van, starring Maggie Smith, was released in 2015, and a new edition of his book of the same name was a #1 bestseller for nine weeks.

General Fields

  • : 9781781256503
  • : Faber & Faber
  • : Faber & Faber
  • : 0.476272
  • : August 2017
  • : 198mm X 129mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : November 2017
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 2 plate sections of 8 pages
  • : 672
  • : very good
  • : 822.914
  • : English
  • : Main
  • : Paperback
  • : Alan Bennett