Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett, born on 9 May 1934 in Armley, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, is an English playwright, author, actor, and screenwriter. The younger son of a Co-op butcher named Walter and his wife Lilian Mary, Bennett attended Christ Church Upper Armley Church of England School and Leeds Modern School before earning a scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated with a first-class degree in history. Prior to Oxford, he learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists during his national service. After graduating, he remained at Magdalen College as a junior lecturer in Medieval History for several years before concluding in 1960 that an academic career was not the right path for him.

That same year, Bennett joined Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, and Peter Cook in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe, which debuted at the Edinburgh Festival in August 1960 before transferring to London and then New York. The production brought Bennett to Broadway in 1962, and the company received a Special Tony Award in 1963. A subsequent production, Beyond the Fringe '65, extended the show's Broadway run. During this period Bennett also appeared in My Father Knew Lloyd George. While at Oxford he had performed comedy with a number of actors who would go on to achieve success, doing so through The Oxford Revue.

Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, was produced in 1968, directed by Patrick Garland and starring John Gielgud. His second play, Getting On, also directed by Garland and starring Kenneth More, followed in 1971. His Broadway credit Habeas Corpus added to his growing stage profile. Television work ran alongside his theatrical output, beginning with A Day Out in 1972, and continuing with A Little Outing in 1977, Intensive Care in 1982, An Englishman Abroad in 1983, and A Question of Attribution in 1991. In 1988, Talking Heads, a series of television monologues, was broadcast and later performed at the Comedy Theatre in London in 1992, with a second set of six monologues following a decade later. His television comedy sketch series On the Margin aired in 1966, though the BBC erased the recordings by reusing the videotape; audio copies of the entire series were discovered and announced in 2014.

In 1980, Bennett wrote the play Enjoy, which ran for seven weeks at the Vaudeville Theatre despite a cast that included Joan Plowright and Colin Blakely. A 2008 UK tour revival transferred to the West End in January 2009, starring Alison Steadman and David Troughton, and exceeded one million pounds in advance ticket sales. Bennett adapted his experiences with an eccentric woman named Miss Shepherd, who lived in dilapidated vans on his driveway for more than fifteen years, into The Lady in the Van, first published as an essay in the London Review of Books in 1989 and then in book form in 1990. He adapted it as a stage play in 1999, directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Maggie Smith, and again as a 2015 film with Smith and Hytner both returning. He also adapted his 1991 play The Madness of George III for the cinema as The Madness of King George in 1994, a film that received four Academy Award nominations, including one for Bennett's screenplay, and won the award for best art direction.

The History Boys marked Bennett's most decorated Broadway achievement. The play first won three Laurence Olivier Awards in 2005, for Best New Play, Best Actor for Richard Griffiths, and Best Direction for Nicholas Hytner, along with Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and Evening Standard Awards. Bennett additionally received the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Theatre. On Broadway, The History Boys won six Tony Awards, among them the Tony Award for Best Play in 2006 and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play the same year. Richard Griffiths won for best performance by a leading actor, Frances de la Tour for best performance by a featured actress, and Hytner for best direction. A film version was released in the UK in October 2006.

Bennett's later stage work includes The Habit of Art, directed by Hytner at the National Theatre in late 2009, which explored the relationship between W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten. People opened at the National Theatre in October 2012, followed in December of that year by Cocktail Sticks, an autobiographical play presented as part of a double bill with the monologue Hymn, also directed by Hytner. That production transferred to the Duchess Theatre in the West End and was subsequently adapted for BBC Radio 4. In July 2018, Allelujah!, a comic drama about a National Health Service hospital threatened with closure, opened at London's Bridge Theatre.

Bennett lived for forty years on Gloucester Crescent in Camden Town, London, before moving to Primrose Hill in 2006 with his partner Rupert Thomas, the former editor of The World of Interiors. He also had a long-term relationship with his former housekeeper Anne Davies until her death in 2009. In September 2005, Bennett disclosed that he had undergone treatment for colorectal cancer in 1997, with surgeons having removed a tumour described as rock-bun sized and his survival chances assessed at less than fifty percent; his cancer subsequently went into remission. He declined a CBE in 1988 and a knighthood in 1996. Bennett is an agnostic who was raised Anglican. His honors across his career include four BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, two Tony Awards, and the Society of London Theatre Special Award, received in 2005.