Overview

Adapted for the screen by the author from his celebrated memoir, Alan Bennett's The Lady in the Van is directed by long-standing collaborator Nicholas Hytner. The film tells the true story of the relationship between Alan Bennett and the singular Miss Shepherd, a woman of uncertain origins who 'temporarily' parked her van in Bennett's London driveway and proceeded to live there for 15 years. Their unique story is funny, poignant and life-affirming. The Complete Lady in the Van contains a Foreword by Nicholas Hytner, a substantial Introduction with diary entries by Alan Bennett, the original memoir and the screenplay. The book includes numerous illustrations by David Gentleman, who sketched on set throughout filming, and a colour plate-section including behind-the-scenes photographs and stills from the film.

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9780571326204

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Reviews

[Alan Bennett] is a prose stylist of disarming grace and humor. --The New York Times Book Review Bennett's genius is for the imploding situation in which a cleverly made house of cards shudders and comes down; the comments of his characters as they nimbly pick their way around the wreckage verge on aphorism. --The New Yorker In the hands of Alan Bennett, the tragic and painful are close bedfellows with the funny and the sexual, making for a collection of stories in which we laugh at the situations presented and then feel a twinge of guilt. --Los Angeles Times [Alan Bennett] is a prose stylist of disarming grace and humor. The New York Times Book Review Bennett's genius is for the imploding situation in which a cleverly made house of cards shudders and comes down; the comments of his characters as they nimbly pick their way around the wreckage verge on aphorism. The New Yorker In the hands of Alan Bennett, the tragic and painful are close bedfellows with the funny and the sexual, making for a collection of stories in which we laugh at the situations presented and then feel a twinge of guilt. Los Angeles Times [Alan Bennett] is a prose stylist of disarming grace and humor. The New York Times Book Review Bennett's genius is for the imploding situation in which a cleverly made house of cards shudders and comes down; the comments of his characters as they nimbly pick their way around the wreckage verge on aphorism. The New Yorker In the hands of Alan Bennett, the tragic and painful are close bedfellows with the funny and the sexual, making for a collection of stories in which we laugh at the situations presented and then feel a twinge of guilt. Los Angeles Times

Author Information

Alan Bennett has been one of our leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s. His television series Talking Heads has become a modern-day classic, as have many of his works for the stage and screen including Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Question of Attribution, The Madness of George III and The History Boys.

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