Alan Bennett: Stories

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.

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.

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.

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.

Untold Stories, Alan Bennett's first major collection of prose since his best-selling Writing Home, brings together the finest and funniest of his writing over the last 10 years.

Untold Stories, Alan Bennett's first major collection of prose since his best-selling Writing Home, brings together the finest and funniest of his writing over the last 10 years.

Originally Released as Untold Stories, Part 1 Alan Bennett's A Life Like Other People’s is the core of his collection Untold Stories. It is a poignant memoir of his parents’ marriage and his own childhood, recalling Christmases with Grandma Peel and the lives, loves, and deaths of his unforgettable aunties, Kathleen and Myra. With the sudden descent of his mother into depression and, later, dementia, a long-held family secret is uncovered in this heart-rending and at times irresistibly funny work of autobiography.

Shortlisted for the Audiobook Download of the Year, 2007.
When the queen chases a straying corgi through the grounds of Buckingham Palace, she happens upon the City of Westminster travelling library, and begins a journey of discovery.

First broadcast on Woman's Hour, Prunella Scales and Patricia Routledge star in this popular BBC Radio 4 comedy Ladies of Letters. This collection features all 11 series. When Irene Spencer meets Vera Small at her daughter Lesley's wedding reception, they embark upon a correspondence that is quite unlike any other in the history of letter writing. Both Irene and Vera are happily widowed and endowed with errant offspring. They live in a world of church fetes and amateur dramatics but love nothing more than dipping their pens in the vitriol pot.

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.

The Wind in the Willows is the classic story featuring Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad (of Toad Hall). In Alice in Wonderland, when Alice follows a white rabbit down a hole, she embarks on a series of adventures with some of the most weird and wonderful characters ever encountered. In Through the Looking Glass, Alice sees another world in the looking glass and wishes she could go there.

Alan Bennett, master storyteller, reads four of his highly-acclaimed stories. Whether comical or quirky, Alan Bennett's poignant stories are rightly regarded as modern classics.

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.

For nearly four decades, David Sedaris has faithfully kept a diary in which he records his thoughts and observations on the odd and funny events he witnesses. Anyone who has attended a live Sedaris event knows that his diary readings are often among the most joyful parts of the evening. But never before have they been available in print or audio.

If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris' cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you're getting with Calypso. You'd be wrong. When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself.