Alan Bennett

Forty Years On

1968. Reprinted in Alan Bennett: Plays One. Faber & Faber, 1991.

Act 1...LECTERN: March, 1913. Lady Ottoline Morrell walks with Bertrand Russell on Primrose Hill.

Sometime in that year of 1913 I walked with Bertie Russell through Regent's Park to Primrose Hill. It was on this hill that the Prince Regent had once thought to put that Pavilion he eventually built at Brighton, and it was here that Wells had pictured the final apocalyptic scene of The War of the Worlds. But it was very peaceful when we walked there: sheep and lambs grazed among the trees and in the distance the solid splendour of St Paul's rose above the smoke of the city.

This is an excerpt from a play within the play, first performed at the Apollo Theatre, London on 31 October 1968. Replying to a query about the origin of this scene, the author said, 'I don't have a reference for Primrose Hill and Ottoline Morrell but I tend to be quite timid about inventing things so it may well be that there is one somewhere but I've forgotten it' (letter to me, January 2009).

Writing Home

1994. Faber & Faber, 1998.

20 May [1983]. In the evening I often bike round Regent's Park. Tonight I am mooning along the Inner Circle past Bedford College when a distraught woman dashes out into the road and nearly fetches me off. She and her friend have found themselves locked in and had to climb over the gate. Her friend, Marie, hasn't made it. And there, laid along the top of one of the five-barred gates, is a plump sixty-year-old lady, one leg either side of the gate, bawling to her friend to hurry up. I climb over and try to assess the situation. "Good," says Marie, her cheek pressed against the gate. "I can see you're of a scientific turn of mind." Her faith in science rapidly evaporates when I try moving her leg, and she yells with pain.

It's at this point that we become aware of an audience. Three Chinese in the regulation rig-out of embassy officials are watching the pantomime, smiling politely and clearly not sure if this is a pastime or a predicament. Eventually they are persuaded to line up on the other side of the gate. I hoist Marie over and she rolls comfortably down into their outstretched arms. Much smiling and bowing. Marie's friend says, "All's well that ends well." Marie says she's laddered both her stockings, and I cycle on my way.

23 June. As A. and I are walking in Regent's Park this evening we stop to watch a baseball game. A police car comes smoothly along the path, keeping parallel with a young black guy who is walking over the grass. The police keep calling to him from the car, but he ignores them and eventually stops right in the middle of the game. A policeman gets out and begins questioning him, but warily and from a distance. The baseball players, unfortunately for the suspect, are all white and they mostly pretend it isn't happening...Only a few unabashedly listen. Someone shouts, "What's he done?" "I want you to bear witness," the man shouts. "You all bear witness."

For his part the policeman ignores the players, sensing that he is at a disadvantage and that the middle of the game is some kind of sanctuary and too public for the law's liking...Meanwhile reinforcements are on the way, and, as a police van speeds over the grass, another policeman gets out of the car and the two of them tackle the suspect. Still one watched, nobody saying anything, those nearest the struggle moving away, their embarrassment now acute. Eventually the police bundle the man into a van and he is driven off...

A Common Assault

London Review of Books, Vol. 26, No. 21, 4th November 2004. Reprinted in Untold Stories. Faber & Faber, 2005.

I was walking in Regent's Park when another stroller stopped me and (with no sign of a cigarette) asked me for a light...

It was one of the 'rare occasions when I was unambiguously approached' but 'failed to divine the true nature of the encounter until it was too late'; a failing ruefully ascribed to 'an innocence I retained long after it could be seen as becoming'. This was not the occasion of the assault, which happened elsewhere.

London Review of Books article, 6th January 2005

London Review of Books, 6th January 2005. Reprinted in Untold Stories. Faber & Faber, 2005.

no designated cycling path through the park, nothing, only a vigilant police force ready to fine any biker they can catch. Why? Is this the case in all the Royal Parks or in all the parks in London? No cycling. Dogs shit there. People fuck there. They even play football and put on plays. But no cycling.

The articles were reprinted in Untold Stories (Faber & Faber, 2005).