In the fourth instalment of his diaries, spanning 2016 to 2024, Alan Bennett worries about repetition, writing: 'I have said everything before. At 90 it’s impossible to avoid repetition.' Yet the prose is layered enough that familiar entries take on new meanings with shifting context. Bennett's pandemic diaries, originally published in 2022, are re-embedded here, and his disdain for the performative clapping for the NHS becomes more apparent in hindsight.
Bennett's national service experience looms large, with annual reminders of his call-up date. He recalls the physical shame of undressing in front of others, managing to avoid it entirely during conscription despite yearning for the casually naked bodies around him. A fumble with a fellow serviceman is so awkward he never mentions it again, reflecting his belief that 'embarrassment is eternal.'
The diaries are not without cattiness. Bennett greets Michael Palin's fourth diary volume with a rivalrous side-eye, finding it 'something of an animated desk diary' after much skipping. He also shows ambivalence towards Jonathan Miller, biting his tongue when Miller boasts about his Mikado production's 300 performances, while Bennett's The History Boys has had 2,000.
Despite physical decline, Bennett's creative life thrives. The 2018 play Allelujah! becomes a film starring Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi and Jennifer Saunders, and The Choral, a film about Elgar and wartime Yorkshire, is a late-life hit. Both are directed by Nicholas Hytner, one of two men Bennett says changed his life, the other being his partner Rupert Thomas.
The diaries avoid sentimentality. At the unveiling of Miller's memorial stone in 2022, Bennett fears his frailty will force him to perch on the monument, a gesture that could be misinterpreted as schadenfreude. He is, after all, the last man standing.
