Altar, noticeboard, medicine chest, cemetery. A shrine laden with the relics of the recent past and a testimonial to the faith that one day the world will turn and the past come back into its own and there will be a restoration. The coinage will make sense once more, letters again cost twopence halfpenny and life return to its old ways. On that day the nasturtiums will be planted, the half-crowns spent, the skin complaint will recur and the ointment be applied once more to the affected part. The Biro will flow again, the second cousin in Toronto will be informed at last of the conviction of the vicar’s wife and on that day the key will be found and the clock strike.
Acknowledgements
In a book that chiefly comprises a collection of diaries I perhaps ought to acknowledge the help, unwitting though it is, of anybody who happens to turn up there. The first reader of these accounts is always Sue Powell, who has been transcribing my diaries now for twenty-five years and in the process has become adept at deciphering my handwriting, undaunted by the odd bits of paper … backs of envelopes the least of it … on which I choose to write. Her diligence is only equalled by her discretion.
Once transcribed, an edited version of the diaries is published in the London Review of Books, to which I’ve been a contributor since its inception in 1979. With the editorial staff both young and bright it’s a fierce filter to pass through but Mary-Kay Wilmers, whom I’ve known all my writing life, has always made me welcome. Besides which, computer illiterate as I am the LRB will always Google for me on request.
Plays apart, I’m published by Faber and Profile in tandem, an arrangement which Stephen Page at Faber and Andrew Franklin at Profile make work admirably. I am not always an easily marketable product but Rebecca Gray tactfully guides me through the publishing maze while Dinah Wood edits me at Faber.
One of the pleasures of doing plays at the National Theatre was to have the programmes compiled by Lyn Haill, then Head of Publications, and I see her touch in the prefaces of the plays and other writings to do with the NT that are included here. My gratitude to Nicholas Hytner is everywhere apparent and repeatedly acknowledged. Thanks too to Niamh Dilworth who so often has smoothed my path.
My debt to my editor at Faber, Dinah Wood, is overwhelming. Patient, meticulous and always cheerful she has made putting the book together a pleasure. I am lucky to have her as my editor.
It will be obvious from the text how much I owe to my partner Rupert Thomas. I don’t think I’m a particularly moody author though I probably wouldn’t know if I was. Rupert tends not to bring work home and I’m seldom at my desk after 7.30 so we don’t tread on one another’s toes. He’s a great help with questions of design and the look of a book and wise to any attempts to bump me into deadlines or unnecessary publicity. Writing isn’t always fun but without him there would be no fun at all.
TEXT PERMISSIONS:
The publishers gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint copyright material in this book as follows:
Extracts from ‘Bestiaries Are Out’, ‘The Sea and the Mirror’ and ‘Epistle to a Godson’ by W. H. Auden taken from Collected Poems, edited by Edward Mendelson. Copyright © 1976 and 1991 by the Estate of W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
Extract from The Power of Delight: A Lifetime in Literature, Essays 1962–2002 by John Bayley (Duckworth Overlook, 2005). Courtesy of Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Extract from Building: Letters, 1960–1975 by Isaiah Berlin (Chatto & Windus, 2013). © The Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd.
Excerpt from ‘He Resigns’ from Collected Poems: 1937–1971 by John Berryman. Copyright © 1989 by Kate Donahue Berryman. Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Extract from Borderland: Continuity and Change in the Countryside, a Country Diary by Ronald Blythe (Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd, 2005). Reprinted courtesy of Canterbury Press.
Extract from The End of the Line by Richard Cobb (John Murray, 1997). © The Estate of Richard Cobb. Reprinted by permission of Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson.
Extract from Injury Time: A Memoir by D. J. Enright (Pimlico, 2003). © The Estate of D. J. Enright. Reproduced by permission of Watson, Little Ltd.
Extract from Poems and Poets by Geoffrey Grigson (Macmillan, 1969). © The Estate of Geoffrey Grigson. Reprinted courtesy Chatto & Windus and Macmillan.
Extract from Against Oblivion: Some Lives of the Twentieth-Century Poets (Viking, 2002). © The Ian Hamilton Estate, with the kind permission of Aitken Alexander Associates Ltd.
‘Goodbye to the Villa Piranha’ by Francis Hope taken from Instead of a Poet and Other Poems (The Bodley Head, 1965). © The Estate of Francis Hope and The Bodley Head, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK.
Extract from The Sixties: Volume Two, 1960–1969 by Christopher Isherwood (Chatto & Windus, 2010). © The Estate of Christopher Isherwood with the kind permission of The Wylie Agency.
‘A War’ from The Complete Poems by Randall Jarrell. Copyright © 1969, renewed 1997 by Mary von S. Jarrell. Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Extract from ‘High Windows’ from The Complete Poems by Philip Larkin. © Estate of Philip Larkin. Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.
Extract taken from October 1967, Letters to Monica by Philip Larkin. © Estate of Philip Larkin. Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.
Extract from Mysteries and Manners by Flannery O’Connor reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd and Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of the Estate of Flannery O’Connor.
Extract from ‘My Parents’, taken from New Collected Poems by Stephen Spender, © 2004. Reprinted by kind permission of the Estate of Stephen Spender.
Extract from ‘Song’ by R. S. Thomas, Stones of the Field (Druid Press, 1946). © The Estate of R. S. Thomas.
Extract from New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families by Colm Tóibín. Published by Viking, 2012. Copyright © Colm Tóibín. Reproduced by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN.
Extract from A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, published by Methuen Drama © 1947 the Estate of the late Tennessee Williams, © 1947, 1953 by The University of The South. Reproduced by permission of Sheil Land Associates Ltd and Georges Borchardt, Inc. for the Estate of Tennessee Williams. All rights reserved.
PICTURE PERMISSIONS:
All photographs courtesy of Rupert Thomas except:
With Rupert en route to our civil partnership 2006 © Tom Miller; Outside the Spider, Bodmin © Adrian Bedson; Alex Jennings as Britten, The Habit of Art © Johan Persson/ArenaPAL; With Nicholas Hytner, The Habit of Art © Johan Persson/ArenaPAL; Richard Griffiths as Auden, The Habit of Art © Johan Persson/ArenaPAL; Jeff Rawle and Gabrielle Lloyd, Cocktail Sticks © Jayne West; George Fenton, Hymn © Jayne West; Filming The Lady in the Van, Gloucester Crescent © Antony Crolla; Filming The Lady in the Van © Antony Crolla; On the terrace, 16th Street, New York, courtesy of Lone Star Productions; Armley Public Library, courtesy of Lone Star Productions; By the beck, Yorkshire, courtesy of Lone Star Productions; With Dinah Wood and Eddie © Olly Lambert; Frances de la Tour and Linda Bassett in People, 2012 © Catherine Ashmore; With Dominic Cooper and James Corden, The History Boys, National Theatre Gala © Catherine Ashmore; Maggie Smith and Alex Jennings filming The Lady in the Van, Nicola Dove © Van Productions; One of my dad’s penguins © Antony Crolla; Plumber by Wilfrid Wood, photo by Stephen Lenthall; My shoe depicted by Rupert as a birthday card © Antony Crolla; AB © Antony Crolla.
Index
Abbot Hall gallery, Kendal 175, 412
About the House (Auden) 105
Ackroyd, Peter 214
Adam, Peter 297
Adam Smith Institute: no friend to the public library 391
Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge 134
Afghanistan 95, 144, 350
, 351
Afternoon Off (Bennett) 8
Against Oblivion (Hamilton) 208
Agate, James 19, 232
Airedale Hospital 116, 368–9
Albery, Donald: prosthesis, social advantages of 20–1, 22
Aldeburgh, Suffolk 89, 121, 308
All Saints, Weston: toxic substances sprayed in churchyard of 70
All Saints, York 187–8
All Souls College, Oxford 41, 44, 386
Allerton High School, Leeds 25
Amis, John 281
Amis, Kingsley 86, 89, 242, 261, 400
Among Booksellers (Batterham) 260
Anatomy of a Soldier (Parker) 373–4
Anderson, Lindsay 64, 196, 326, 500, 501, 517
Anderson, Sam 339, 410, 413–14, 417
Andrew (owner of Gardenmakers) 287, 290, 310
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: AB cheek by jowl with 141, 165
Annan, Noel 367
Apostles (Cambridge group): more self-regarding than their namesakes 42
Archive Hour (radio programme) 165, 281
Armley, Leeds 35, 87, 131, 154, 201, 255, 341, 449, 451, 477
Armley baths 12, 385
Armley Public Library 379–81, 390
Arthur, Prince of Wales (Henry VIII’s brother) 180, 318
Arts Theatre, Cambridge 396
Ashcroft, Lord 208
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 434
Asquith, Raymond 257
Attenborough, David 69, 362, 364
Auden, W. H. 90, 103, 105, 121–2, 134, 136, 143, 183, 190, 194, 198, 206, 228, 296, 306, 325, 389, 425–7, 429–30, 431, 432
see also Habit of Art, The
Auschwitz concentration camp 152, 315, 463
Austwick, North Yorkshire: wartime excitement at 140, 248–9
Ayesha (boa constrictor): and partner Clementine 340–1
Azakh (barber): AB’s eyebrows a challenge to 366–7
Bacon, Francis 32, 194
Baconsthorpe Castle, Norfolk 338
Bader, Douglas 20, 21
Balthazar restaurant, London 301–2, 321
Barenboim, Daniel 149–50
Barkisland, West Yorkshire: unlikely hide-away of Ivor Novello 274
Barnett, Sam 18, 415, 421, 518
Bassett, John 22–3
Bata shoe museum, Toronto 157
Bates, Alan 499–500, 502, 505
Bath, Somerset 124–5, 361–2
Batterham, David 260
Bayley, John 77, 132
BBC ix, 115, 123, 144, 172, 297, 314, 327, 355, 373, 439, 501
BBC2 69, 131, 198
BBC3 224
BBC4 194, 198, 268
Radio 3 xiii, 127, 281, 369–70
Radio 4 74, 76, 144, 165, 281, 518
World Service 7, 210
BBC Proms (television programme) 149, 314
Beckett, Samuel 117, 348, 452
Beecham, Thomas 370
Beer, Richard 103
Bell, Lord 180
Benedict XVI 76–7, 226–7
Bennett, Arnold (not the author of Clayhanger but AB’s cousin the policeman) 385–6
Bennett, George (AB’s uncle) 227
Bennett, Gordon (AB’s brother) 11, 35, 114, 168–9, 272, 288, 315, 320, 380, 446
Bennett, Lilian (née Peel; AB’s mother) xi, 87, 105, 114, 116, 118, 156, 169, 180, 211, 219, 233, 236, 237, 270, 298, 310, 320, 370, 380, 445–6, 450
Bennett, Walter (AB’s father) xi, 114, 116, 118, 169, 176, 211, 219, 232, 236, 326, 380–1, 445–6, 450
as butcher 130, 135, 142, 158, 176, 230, 272, 296, 365
fiddle-playing of 244–5, 256, 369, 440–1
literary taste of 353
penguin toys made by 130–1
Bennison, Geoffrey 461–2
Benson, Albert: shares initials and desk with AB (aged 6) 268
Berkeley, Michael xiii, 369
Berlin, Isaiah 182–3, 347
Best of British (World at One feature) 348–9
Betjeman, John 202, 229, 271, 273
Betty’s Tea Rooms 35, 239, 267, 335
Bevan, Robert: unabashed by mauve 175
Beyond the Fringe (BTF) 17, 20–1, 22, 38, 42, 48, 64, 106, 122, 192, 203, 292, 296, 311, 341, 396, 428, 449, 451, 453, 453–4
Bide, Penelle 234, 235
Billy Liar (film) 500
Binyon, Timothy 295, 296
Bird, John 78–9, 87, 123, 143, 190, 311, 320, 391
Blair, Tony 7, 11, 18, 23, 26, 27, 39, 48, 53, 71, 77, 95, 102, 124, 144, 223, 327
Blakiston, Noel 387
Blasted (Kane) 347–8
Blunt, Anthony 42, 64, 76, 126–7, 156, 165, 185, 186, 265, 329, 389, 508
Blythe, Ronald 28, 308
Bodleian Library, Oxford 81, 137, 141, 164–5, 192–3, 334, 386, 518
Bodmin, AB’s army camp at 39–40, 303, 473–4
Bodoano, Bridget (AB and Rupert’s friend) 300, 346, 363–4
Bologna, Italy 96–8
Bond Street, brothel in: now Burberry’s 22–3
Booker Prize 155
‘Books Do Furnish a Room’ (Powell): not AB’s mother’s view 389
Borges, Jorge Luis 375
Bown, Jane 345
Bradford 60, 73, 112, 274, 312–13
Bramhope, West Yorkshire 286–7, 353
Branson, Richard 175, 317, 344
Bremner, Bird and Fortune (television programme) 78–9
Brent Council 247, 248, 259
Brewhouse, Oxford (Auden’s cottage) 425, 427
Bridcut, John 63, 427, 428
Brideshead Revisited (Waugh) 13, 129–30, 161, 314
British Airways 6, 72, 96
British Council, Rome 6–7, 8
British Museum 50, 65, 85, 119–20, 338, 387
Britten, Benjamin 63–4, 88, 89, 103–4, 190, 194, 308, 427–30, 433
see also Habit of Art, The
Britten’s Children (Bridcut) 63
Broadway, New York 56–7, 407
Brogan, Denis 86–7
Bron, Eleanor 177, 320
Bronowski, Jacob 315
Brooklyn, New York 209
Brotherton Library, Leeds 309, 384
Broughton Castle, Oxfordshire 407–8
Brown, Gordon 119, 144, 167, 210
Browne, Coral 434, 500
Browne, Des 73
Bryant, Michael 505–6
Buckingham Palace 18–19
Burge, Stuart 277, 322
Burgess, Guy 41–2, 165–6, 186, 329, 434
Burnham, Andy 167
Burton Agnes Hall, East Yorkshire 479
Burton, Peter 273, 274
Bush, George W. 6, 23, 26, 57–8, 77, 144
Butcher’s Hall 10–11
Butler, Red 134
Byland Abbey 179–80, 189, 205
C., Dr (oncologist) 246–7
Caesar and Cleopatra (Shaw) 453
Cairncross, John 165
Cambridge 11, 118–19, 134, 169, 201–2, 328, 389, 396–9, 473
Cambridge Footlights 311
Cambridge spies 41–2, 126–7, 165, 185, 186, 265, 327, 329–30
Cambridge University 19, 40, 42, 135–6, 395–8, 411, 472
see also specific colleges
Camden Town x, 50, 51, 53, 68, 98, 128, 161–3, 175, 215, 254, 324, 331, 343, 412, 480, 481
Parkway 29, 104, 137, 340, 366–7
Camden Town Hall xi, 50, 52
Cameron, David 124, 200, 201, 239, 365–6
Cameron, Norman 230
Canetti, Elias: no reference to co-op horse in works of 256
Canova 84
Capitoline Museum, Rome 7
Capote, Truman 17, 207
Caravaggio 10, 83
Carl Rosa Opera Company 485
Carpenter, Humphrey 88, 89, 220, 235, 271, 272, 430
Carroll, Lewis 426
Cash, Tony 362, 471
Casson, Hugh 125
Castle Howard, North Yorkshire 161
Chalcot S
quare, London: No. 16 AB’s flat in x, 48, 154, 253
Chalfont, Lord 167
Chamberlain, Neville 77, 229
Chambers, Guy 278, 279
Chapman, Graham 5, 6
Charge of the Light Brigade 388
Charles I 408
Charles, Prince of Wales 78, 106, 144, 181, 216–17
Chatsworth House 168, 338
Chatto, Ros 104–5, 134, 280–1
Chatwin, Bruce 231–2, 235–6
Cheever, John 147–8, 192
Chelsea Barracks 181, 216–17
Christ Church C. of E. Primary School, Leeds 59
Christ Church College, Oxford 425, 426
Christ Church, Spitalfields, London 84
Christopherson, Romola 202
Church of England xii, 401, 404
‘Church Going’ (Larkin) 207, 366
Churches Conservation Trust 290
City of Leeds School, Woodhouse 78, 289
City Reference Library see Leeds Reference Library
Clare, John 37
Clark, Alan 222–3, 261
Clark, Kenneth 39, 202, 222
Clothes They Stood Up In, The (Bennett) 485
Cobb, Richard 149, 260–1, 264–5
Cockburn High School, Leeds 448–9
Cocktail Sticks (Bennett) xii, 339, 445–54, 509
Codrington Library, Oxford 386
Coe, Jonathan 311
Cole, Stephanie 8, 361–2
Collected Stories (Cheever) 147–8
Collins, Joan 278, 313
Common Ground (Cowan) 350–1
Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield 395
Compton-Burnett, Ivy 184, 262, 285, 448
Connolly, Cyril 105–6, 384, 387, 434
Cook, Peter 5, 38, 42, 122, 258, 292, 296, 311, 320, 415, 453
Cooper, Dominic 409, 411, 412, 416
Corbyn, Jeremy 363, 372
Corden, James 56, 80, 351, 411, 414
Cornelissen & Son, L. (art supplies shop), Great Russell Street 50–1
Cotman, J. S. 458
Coulsdon, AB’s army training at 363, 472–3
Council for the Defence of British Universities 303
County Arcade, Leeds 130
Courtauld Institute 262, 265, 300
Cowan, Rob 350–1
Crabbe, George 430
Craft, Robert 166
Crampton, Nancy 60