Fair Play Fair Play

Mamie I love Alan Bennett too. I'll store this article up for reading later.

The only Alan Bennett book I couldn't get on with, was "Smut". I just didn't get it and never finished reading it.

Same here, Grannyknot, I didn't get Smut at all either (although I stoically finished both stories). I'll read the article later too.

I'm not at all stoical with books. I toss it as soon as it becomes apparent to me that a book is hard work or I am finding it tedious. I want writing to sing to me

Better minds than mine have tackled this problem and continue to do so and I would be foolish if I claimed to have a solution. But I know what is part of the problem and that is private education. My objection to private education is simply put. It is not fair. And to say that nothing is fair is not an answer. Governments, even this one, exist to make the nation’s circumstances more fair, but no government, whatever its complexion, has dared to tackle private education.

Quite surprised that this came from Alan Bennett. I agree.

Never thought of Alan Bennett as being political. It's a shame it took him until he was 80 to write this. Now I want him to go on marches about the cuts.

I love Alan Bennett too. How many other people would have allowed an eccentric (and, by all accounts, rather bossy) old lady live in her van in his driveway for several years.

I skipped through the lecture and will read it properly another day. I really liked the last paragraph, though it also made me rather sad.

Apparently Melvyn Bragg recently criticised northern writers for "making fun of" or being condescending about their northern roots, and it was suggested that Alan Bennett was one of the writers to whom he might have been referring. I've always found AB's depiction of his family as wryly affectionate and in no way meant to be cruel or hurtful.

Thanks Mamie.

Sorry not read the article, but Eloethan's last point about Melvyn Bragg exercised me a little - why shouldn't northern writers make fun of their northern roots? Aren't we allowed to see the funny side of any regional characteristics now? Does he object to Jewish people making fun of themselves? You are right Eloethan, it is possible to be humorous without being cruel.
Melvyn is a little too far up his own bottom sometimes

... and I don't have any frame of reference for the English North-South divide, and I've never felt that Alan Bennett is making fun of his northern roots in a disparaging way, quite the contrary in fact. He writes of it with much affection.

A gem - as of course one would expect from Alan Bennett - his comments about profit as a sole worthwhile motive ring so true, whilst we are in the grip if governments who have no concept of what a social service is: "I am uneasy when prisons are run for profit or health services either. The rewards of probation and the alleviation of suffering are human profits and nothing to do with balance sheets." Hear, hear.

For some reason I cannot bear Melvyn Bragg - he really gets under my skin. I have no idea why. I switch off when he is on.

Thanks for linking us to this 'sermon', mamie. I've always thought of AB as one of the most humane writers of his (our?) generation. I loved his 'Untold Stories' and mean to re-read it... one day. He had a similar background to my FiL who was a Cambridge scholarship boy from Bradford, though a generation earlier than Bennett. I don't know whether this gave FiL the almighty chip he carried on his shoulder right to the end of his life, but I am so glad that Bennett managed to avoid this obdurately class-based chip. Interestingly, I think, his fellow performers in the seminal 'Beyond the Fringe' were all privately educated. If you've never heard his 'My brother Esau' sermon, do try to get hold of a recording of BtF. It stands the test of time.

anno Just watched My Brother Esau (Take a Pew) on youtube. Very funny. Thanks.