A Wistful Teddy Bear in a Woolly Cardigan ; Untold Stories by Alan Bennett (Faber Profile, Pounds 20)

Summary

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PUT TOGETHER all the opera singers who have recorded pop tunes and they wouldn't have a thing to teach Alan Bennett, the king of crossover. This teddy bear in a woolly cardy, sometimes topped by a dirty mac, appeals not just to the London Review of Books crowd but also the gay brigade, the punters who buy theatre tickets only for the wife's birthday and the nostalgia fetishists, who, at the mention of "outside lav" or "cretonne curtains," mentally murmur, "Bless."

While a fan of Bennett the dramatist, I am less enamoured of the Bennett who is the T-shirt, as it were, of the show. In a book this long, he is not sufficiently complex to sustain my interest, especially since he plucks so often the same wistful string.

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Extract

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A Wistful Teddy Bear in a Woolly Cardigan ; Untold Stories by Alan Bennett (Faber Profile, Pounds 20)

I do not suspect Bennett of fabrication - his utter decency is beyond question - but, the more one reads this often repetiti...

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