House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries

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He admits that lockdown makes little difference to his life, given that he is effectively housebound with age (86) and arthritis. His two favourite novels are Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love and Andrew Barrow’s The Tap Dancer, which he wishes he’d ­written himself. Our national treasure at work during the pandemic – sharing his everyday thoughts, alongside his increasing physical infirmities, in his own inimitable way. Farewell to the bike has to some extent meant farewell to the health that went with it, and my life is increasingly medicated.

Alan Bennett | Stage | The Guardian Alan Bennett | Stage | The Guardian

If Bennett’s speech can be jumbled, his writing remains as deft and seamless as ever, especially when dealing with that most numinous of subjects, his childhood in working-class Leeds. The fact that Her Majesty could probably not manage this today is a reminder of how swiftly treacherous advanced old age can be. Geoffrey Palmer’s memorial service from St Paul’s Covent Garden, one of a growing number, I imagine, of those held on Zoom.

Evidence presented to the UK’s Covid-19 inquiry in London this week demonstrates why government ministers, special.

House Arrest by Alan Bennett | Waterstones

And that it was the now much abused Speaker, John Bercow, who ruled out any thought of Trump addressing a joint session of parliament. It brought home to me that HMQ (as she was billed in the programme) was a person like no other, a woman who has been everywhere, met everyone and to whom nothing comes as a surprise. Boris Johnson’s nightly addresses during the Pandemic are “ pretty pointless… a poor orator and speaker generally… the plainness of Keir Starmer a relief.The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, was caught admitting that world leaders are tired of the Ukraine war and. The Washington-born, Baltimore-based pianist Lafayette Gilchrist treads a very personal path, combining the stride and blues styles of the old school with the hip-hop and go-go funk rhythms of his youth. It’s an exemplary service, friendly, cheerful and sometimes hair-raising, they push you at such a rate. 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.

House Arrest - British Theatre Guide Book review: House Arrest - British Theatre Guide

Many prospective readers are likely to have enjoyed previous volumes of Bennett diaries and once again this one, though slight, will not disappoint. I am unexpectedly on the verge of tears for someone who always put a smile on my face in art and life. Lunch follows just outside the station at Sous Le Nez, a cosy brasserie on Quebec Street where we have been coming now for 10 years, and which happily has survived its enforced closure.

We have resumed our pre-lockdown routine, going home by train from King’s Cross to Leeds with a wheelchair at both ends. I must be one of the very few of the late queen’s subjects to have said – or almost said – the word ‘erection’ in her presence. Illustration: Barry Falls/The Observer ‘His writing remains as deft and seamless as ever’ … Alan Bennett.

House Arrest to The World in 2050 Books of the month: From House Arrest to The World in 2050

There is some truth in this in the sense that my awareness of upper-class tropes comes not from Debo but her sister Nancy, whose The Pursuit of Love I have known ever since I first discovered it in Majority 1931–1952 – the omnibus edition of Hamish Hamilton publications, read when I was at Oxford.

As my Mrs often says, 'if only it were longer' - Only 44 actual (smallish) pages of musings, I've read thicker takeaway menu's, however, none offering anything as delicious as what Mr Bennett serves up here. Browsing in a well-known high street chain the other day — you can never have enough socks — I was struck by how much. The pandemic is the background and, indeed, the foreground to this latest and most slender tranche of journals, which runs to a mere 64 pages. The one he chose was an Italian fiddle, a Degani with a wonderful sweetness of tone, which he played in the last years of his life.