Bennett’s House Arrest, covering the Lockdown and Vaccination years, is little more than an Epilogue at a mere 49 pages – a bit longer than a Talking Heads monologue.

I very much identified with his recollection of the loss of his conversational powers whilst trying to book a routine appointment after lockdown and having to hand the phone over to his partner, Rupert, who that bit younger and having kept up his conversational skills working from home on zoom, completed the task. Since our earliest beginnings, every documented society has gathered to perform elaborate rites and ceremonies - from mass worship to body modification - yet ritual poses a deep paradox: why do we give the utmost importance to otherwise pointless activities? House Arrest - Pandemic Diaries' (2022) - is a very lovely, although very short (coming in at less than 50 pages) collection taken from Alan Bennett's diaries of the time.You certainly divided the audience there with your anti Brexit, anti current government sentiments and provided much food for thought. Felt like a contractual obligation was being fulfilled with this very slight and disjointed melange. Bought today and have no idea when this was published but it feels just like sitting with Alan Bennett for a chat.

Contemplating the current regime of hand-washing and elbow-bumping pitches him straight back to the 1940s when the unfortunate family next door succumb to TB. The news that the cast and crew of the new Talking Heads series have agreed to take only a nominal fee and donate the profits to the NHS gives him a rare rush of pleasure in a world dominated by the bleak economics of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. In Ritual, pioneering scientist Dimitris Xygalatas leads an enlightening tour through one of the most shadowy realms of human behaviour. The entries begin on 24 February 2020, with the diarist chipper about the unlikelihood of the new virus in Milan having much effect on London living, and chunter on to the autumn of 2021 when the crisis appears to be in the rearview mirror (we know, although he does not, that Omicron is lurking in the wings). As you'd expect, 'House Arrest' is an erudite, insiteful, quietly witty book, whilst somewhat infused with an air of pathos throughout - Bennett alludes to the aging process and the things, such as cycling, that he's no longer able to do due to his advancing years.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Lacking any real insight or substance this collection of diary entries will likely leave you feeling slightly short-changed. In no time, however, I was drawn in by Bennett's spot on reminiscences and comments upon current happenings.

The fact that Her Majesty could probably not manage this today is a reminder of how swiftly treacherous advanced old age can be. He recounts a telling anecdote from 1941 in which the whole family went on a Sunday fishing expedition in the country. and talking completely gibberish on the telephone havingly seemingly lost my ability to construct a sentence. Some really touching and poignant moments in here; a few bits that stand out are when Bennett has a small interaction with a stranger sweeping the street that “makes his morning” (such interactions being rare at that point), a footnote in a poem in LRB triggering a vivid childhood memory from 1941 (genuinely fascinating and one of my favourite things is when a tiny snippet evokes mass nostalgia), and when he struggles to explain how his glasses have broken to an optician because of the lack of speaking he’s done to other people during 2020 (definitely remember making some pretty awful blunders for a good few months until I worked out how to socialise again).As said I had already read this somewhere else, thought the book would be extra entries to his diaries of lockdown, but unfortunately not. Alan Bennett's collection of prose, Untold Stories , won the PEN/Ackerley Prize for Autobiography, 2006.