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Alan Bennett
- Untold Stories Part 4: A Common Assault
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 2 hrs and 24 mins
- Radio/TV Programme
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, Entertainment & Celebrities
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Alan Bennett
- Diaries 1980-1990
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 1 hr and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Alan Bennett's gentle, wry observations of life have made him one of the country's best-loved and most famous authors. He reads extracts from his best-selling diaries which offer a fascinating insight into his life - the work on location, life in Camden and fond, poignant memories of his childhood and home life.
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Entertaining
- By Vivienne on 05-12-15
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Alan Bennett: Keeping On Keeping On
- Diaries 2005-2014
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Alan Bennett narrates the latest installment of his diaries, as heard on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week. Following on from Alan Bennett's best-selling, award-winning prose collections Writing Home and Untold Stories, Keeping On Keeping On is a third anthology featuring his unique observations, recollections and reminiscences. At its heart is his latest published collection of diaries.
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Described as unabridged but not really
- By pwgc on 10-11-16
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Alan Bennett
- Telling Tales
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 2 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Following on from the phenomenal success of Writing Home, Alan Bennett reminisces about his early years, from his schooldays to undergraduate life at Oxford University.
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Beautifully poignant and funny
- By Paul Brookes on 17-11-16
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Alan Bennett at the BBC
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 2 hrs and 35 mins
- Original Recording
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This unique anthology of Alan Bennet's BBC radio and television work features extracts from his diaries and readings, as well as tributes to friends Russell Harty and Peter Cook.
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I love all things Alan Bennett
- By AMC on 08-01-22
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Alan Bennett: Stories
- Read by Alan Bennett
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Original Recording
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A unique collection of eight Alan Bennett stories, read by the author. Alan Bennett is one of Britain's best-loved authors and an acclaimed storyteller. This exclusive compilation includes eight of his best tales, collected together for the first time. Here is his celebrated, iconic memoir 'The Lady in the Van'; as well as two fascinating autobiographical accounts of his family and childhood.
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Consummate story-teller
- By Kirstine on 04-12-16
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The Complete Talking Heads
- The classic BBC Radio 4 monologues plus A Woman of No Importance
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett, Patricia Routledge
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The complete audio collection of Alan Bennett's celebrated monologues, published together for the first time and performed by some of Britain's best actors. The Talking Heads monologues are widely regarded as one of Alan Bennett's finest dramatic achievements. First broadcast on BBC TV and BBC Radio 4 in the 1980s and 1990s, they won a host of awards and huge popular acclaim, and remain among his most admired works today.
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Bleak but brilliant!
- By L on 01-01-16
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Alan Bennett
- Diaries 1980-1990
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 1 hr and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alan Bennett's gentle, wry observations of life have made him one of the country's best-loved and most famous authors. He reads extracts from his best-selling diaries which offer a fascinating insight into his life - the work on location, life in Camden and fond, poignant memories of his childhood and home life.
-
-
Entertaining
- By Vivienne on 05-12-15
-
Alan Bennett: Keeping On Keeping On
- Diaries 2005-2014
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alan Bennett narrates the latest installment of his diaries, as heard on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week. Following on from Alan Bennett's best-selling, award-winning prose collections Writing Home and Untold Stories, Keeping On Keeping On is a third anthology featuring his unique observations, recollections and reminiscences. At its heart is his latest published collection of diaries.
-
-
Described as unabridged but not really
- By pwgc on 10-11-16
-
Alan Bennett
- Telling Tales
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 2 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following on from the phenomenal success of Writing Home, Alan Bennett reminisces about his early years, from his schooldays to undergraduate life at Oxford University.
-
-
Beautifully poignant and funny
- By Paul Brookes on 17-11-16
-
Alan Bennett at the BBC
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 2 hrs and 35 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This unique anthology of Alan Bennet's BBC radio and television work features extracts from his diaries and readings, as well as tributes to friends Russell Harty and Peter Cook.
-
-
I love all things Alan Bennett
- By AMC on 08-01-22
-
Alan Bennett: Stories
- Read by Alan Bennett
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A unique collection of eight Alan Bennett stories, read by the author. Alan Bennett is one of Britain's best-loved authors and an acclaimed storyteller. This exclusive compilation includes eight of his best tales, collected together for the first time. Here is his celebrated, iconic memoir 'The Lady in the Van'; as well as two fascinating autobiographical accounts of his family and childhood.
-
-
Consummate story-teller
- By Kirstine on 04-12-16
-
The Complete Talking Heads
- The classic BBC Radio 4 monologues plus A Woman of No Importance
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett, Patricia Routledge
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The complete audio collection of Alan Bennett's celebrated monologues, published together for the first time and performed by some of Britain's best actors. The Talking Heads monologues are widely regarded as one of Alan Bennett's finest dramatic achievements. First broadcast on BBC TV and BBC Radio 4 in the 1980s and 1990s, they won a host of awards and huge popular acclaim, and remain among his most admired works today.
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Bleak but brilliant!
- By L on 01-01-16
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Smut: Two Unseemly Stories: The Greening of Mrs Donaldson & The Shielding of Mrs Forbes
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 3 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Two unexpected tales written and read by the best-selling author of The Uncommon Reader, Untold Stories and The History Boys."The Greening of Mrs Donaldson" - Mrs Donaldson is a conventional middle-class woman beached on the shores of widowhood after a marriage that had been much like many others: happy to begin with, then satisfactory and finally dull. But when she decides to take in two lodgers, her mundane life becomes much more stimulating…
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Bennett at his best!
- By Tracey on 25-05-11
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Alan Bennett: Plays
- BBC Radio Dramatisations
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: John Gielgud, Maggie Smith, Patricia Routledge
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Original Recording
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A unique collection of 12 full-cast BBC Radio productions of plays by Alan Bennett. The titles are: 40 Years On, A Visit from Miss Prothero, Say Something Happened, Kafka's Dick, Two in Torquay, The Madness of George III, The History Boys, An Englishman Abroad, A Question of Attribution, The Lady in the Van, Cocktail Sticks and The Last of the Sun.
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Track Listings
- By "scarlioni" on 26-07-20
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Alan & Thora
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett, Thora Hird
- Length: 1 hr and 35 mins
- Original Recording
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This splendid title showcases the combined talents of Alan Bennett, one of our foremost dramatists and writers, and Thora Hird, the celebrated and much-loved actor who died in 2003. It features an exclusive and unique recording, The Last of the Sun, that Thora made for BBC Audiobooks a couple of months before her death.
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lovely memiors of a truly loved lady.
- By Christine Hargreaves on 02-04-14
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Six Poets
- Hardy to Larkin: An Anthology
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 2 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Alan Bennett's selection of English verse by his favourite poets: Thomas Hardy, A.E. Housman, W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, and Philip Larkin is accompanied by his own enlivening commentary and was recorded before a live audience. In this personal anthology, Alan Bennett has chosen more than seventy poems by six well-loved poets, discussing the writers and their verse in his customary conversational style through anecdote, shrewd appraisal and spare but telling biographical detail.
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Just Listen
- By Martin on 14-07-15
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The Lady in the Van
- A BBC Radio 4 adaptation
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett, full cast, Maggie Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 31 mins
- Original Recording
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Maggie Smith stars in this BBC radio adaptation of Alan Bennett's highly acclaimed autobiographical stage play. An eccentric old lady moves into a quiet street in Camden Town. There she remains, installed in her van in glorious self-sufficiency, until the council instructs her to move on. Then a kind homeowner invites her to move her van into his garden - where she stays for the next 15 years.
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Brilliant, a classic
- By T M Brown on 01-01-16
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Cocktail Sticks
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings, Alan Bennett, full cast
- Length: 56 mins
- Original Recording
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A radio adaptation of Alan Bennett's short autobiographical play, originally directed by Nicholas Hytner for the National Theatre. Alan looks back on his early life with affection and sadness, revisiting some of the themes and conversations of his memoir 'A Life Like other People's'. Both he and his mother are seduced by the idea that other people's lives are much richer and fulfilling than their own.
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ALAN BENNETT A DEDICATED SON
- By Highlight on 10-09-18
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Getting On
- A BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Drama
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Charles Simpson, David Rintoul, Emily Richard, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 44 mins
- Original Recording
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A BBC Radio 4 full-cast production of one of the earliest plays by Alan Bennett. The 1970s are a time of change, but Labour MP George Oliver feels stuck in one place: distrusting the ‘mawkish mentality’ of the young and fearing the encroaching life of the middle-aged, with little to look forward to but the imminent end of a not-very-interesting road.
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Lady in the Van
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 1 hr and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The humorous and moving tale of Miss Shepherd, an eccentric old lady who, by a bizarre series of twists and turns, lived in the author's garden for many years. Alan Bennett reads his own acclaimed work, recently adapted as a West End smash hit starring Maggie Smith as the eccentric old lady.
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Charming
- By Mrs Z Armour on 02-04-10
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Alan Bennett's On the Margin
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennet, John Sergeant
- Length: 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Produced by Sydney Lotterby of Yes Minister and Porridge fame. Each instalment featured a mixture of sketches (some foreshadowing Bennett's subsequent television dramas, others mocking television clichés, such as documentaries about working-class Northern writers and discussion programmes featuring pretentious critics). This is a never before broadcast compilation of sketches and extracts from the TV series before the tapes where wiped.
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Quietly peddling his genius
- By D Temple on 04-12-19
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Old Rage
- By: Sheila Hancock
- Narrated by: Sheila Hancock
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Sheila Hancock looked like she was managing old age. She had weathered and even thrived in widowhood, taking on acting roles that would have been demanding for a woman half her age. She had energy, friends, a devoted family, a lovely home. She could still remember her lines. So why, at 89, having sailed past supposedly disturbing milestones—50, 70 even 80—without a qualm, did she suddenly feel so furious? Shocking diagnoses, Brexit and bereavement seemed to knock her from every quarter. And that was before lockdown.
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What a legend!
- By Leigh H on 28-06-22
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Windswept & Interesting
- My Autobiography
- By: Billy Connolly
- Narrated by: Billy Connolly
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In his first full-length autobiography, comedy legend and national treasure Billy Connolly reveals the truth behind his windswept and interesting life. Born in a tenement flat in Glasgow in 1942, orphaned by the age of fourth and a survivor of appalling abuse at the hands of his own family, Billy's life is a remarkable story of success against all the odds.
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Marvellous
- By john donoghue on 14-10-21
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This Much Is True
- By: Miriam Margolyes
- Narrated by: Miriam Margolyes
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning actor, creator of a myriad of memorable characters from Lady Whiteadder to Professor Sprout, Miriam Margolyes is a national treasure. Now, at last, at the age of 80, she has finally decided to tell her extraordinary life story. And it's far richer and stranger than any part she's played.
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Frank & Funny
- By John C. Patterson on 23-09-21
Summary
Winner of the British Book Awards, Author of the Year, 2006.
Untold Stories, Alan Bennett's first major collection of prose since his bestselling Writing Home, brings together the finest and funniest of his writing over the last ten years. After Untold Stories: Part 1: Stories, Part 2: The Diaries and Part 3: Written on the Body (all available from BBC Audiobooks), Part 4: A Common Assault contains two more reminiscences from Bennett's life and an essay on the class system.
A Common Assault describes an incident in Italy when he was mugged, and found himself trying to give a statement to the police in bad Italian. The History Boys harks back once more to Bennett's time at school, and shows how the raw material of experience was eventually transformed into the highly-acclaimed stage play The History Boys. Arise, Sir..., finishes on a light-hearted note, in which Bennett muses on the Honours List in typically iconoclastic mode.
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- Jeff
- 19-07-15
Like No Other
Words fail. If you have not read Alan Bennett then what a void about that is filled only by reading any one, or all, of his works, There is nobody else quite like him.
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