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Alan Bennett Diaries #4
Enough Said: The Instant Number 1 Sunday Times Bestseller
20 September. Have a notion for a radio series - Awkward Conversations.
Enough Said is Alan Bennett's fourth collection of diaries and prose. Covering the turbulent years 2016 to 2024, the diaries take us through lockdown, Brexit, the reign of Johnson, the rise of Trump and the death of the Queen. In between, we take the train with him back and forth to Yorkshire, celebrate the herons, the newts and the street fairs, and lament the scarcity of curlews, the closure of the last local bank and the deteriorating welfare state. There is the premiere of Allelujah!, the revived Talking Heads, the publication of two Sunday Times bestsellers and the filming of The Choral.
2024 is the year that Alan turns ninety; he reflects on old age and the importance of luck. He looks back to childhood and recalls an idyllic wartime month as an evacuee. A book for the bedside, this is poignant, funny, contemplative Alan Bennett, as he records life both personal and political in his most distinct of voices.
Enough Said is Alan Bennett's fourth collection of diaries and prose. Covering the turbulent years 2016 to 2024, the diaries take us through lockdown, Brexit, the reign of Johnson, the rise of Trump and the death of the Queen. In between, we take the train with him back and forth to Yorkshire, celebrate the herons, the newts and the street fairs, and lament the scarcity of curlews, the closure of the last local bank and the deteriorating welfare state. There is the premiere of Allelujah!, the revived Talking Heads, the publication of two Sunday Times bestsellers and the filming of The Choral.
2024 is the year that Alan turns ninety; he reflects on old age and the importance of luck. He looks back to childhood and recalls an idyllic wartime month as an evacuee. A book for the bedside, this is poignant, funny, contemplative Alan Bennett, as he records life both personal and political in his most distinct of voices.
464 pages, Hardcover
First published March 19, 2026
About the author
Alan Bennett
297 books1,146 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
Alan Bennett is an English author and Tony Award-winning playwright. Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, was produced in 1968. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, along with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose and broadcasting, and many appearances as an actor. Bennett's lugubrious yet expressive voice (which still bears a slight Leeds accent) and the sharp humour and evident humanity of his writing have made his readings of his own work (especially his autobiographical writing) very popular. His readings of the Winnie the Pooh stories are also widely enjoyed.
Alan Bennett is an English author and Tony Award-winning playwright. Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, was produced in 1968. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, along with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose and broadcasting, and many appearances as an actor. Bennett's lugubrious yet expressive voice (which still bears a slight Leeds accent) and the sharp humour and evident humanity of his writing have made his readings of his own work (especially his autobiographical writing) very popular. His readings of the Winnie the Pooh stories are also widely enjoyed.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
June 8, 2026
enjoyed this book witty in parts as he reads about his life and events of the time
April 4, 2026
I did not want this to end. Wonderful as ever and it’s only a ‘bedside’ book if that means you’re unable to leave your bed and stop reading it
April 4, 2026
His wit shines through his diaries - honest and self-deprecating always, a pleasure to read.
April 30, 2026
Masterful and wonderful and well, very full. He makes the ordinary extraordinary and vice versa. My hero.
April 19, 2026
I fell to wondering why I enjoy reading the diaries of living persons and realised that it's all down to nosiness. I want to know what they get up to, with whom they have lunch and their thoughts on contemporary life. I am sure that a psychiatrist would probably point out that I am living my life vicariously through another person's as my own is so uninteresting and uneventful.
I have read previous of Bennett's diaries and enjoyed them hugely for their wit and insights. These trademarks are still present in this new volume, but, overall, there is a sense of melancholy, of a life having been lived. Bennett does not enjoy good health, has to use a wheelchair and is very much an observer at parties due to his lack of mobility. But hasn't he been an observer all his life anyway?
Bennett is extremely fortunate in having a group of willing helpers. Not only his partner, but those who help him sort out his books prior to a move; even the staff at Kings Cross station who assist him with his wheelchair on his frequent train journeys to Yorkshire, where he has a house, and is regarded as a local celebrity.
Occasionally, a jarring note will creep in . Almost in passing, he mentions that someone has poured liquid shit, again, on his bicycle saddle, Nothing more is said about this incident; homophobia, perhaps?
Another incident in which much is left unsaid, is Bennett remembering lying in his bed on the first night of his National Service and listening to other conscriptees crying. This is an aspect of Bennett's life about which he has not written much and it would be interesting if he did so, especially as the National Service experience is fast fading into the nation's memory.
Despite my good intentions about rationing my reading to prolong the pleasure of being in Mr Bennett's company, I raced through the book in four days.
I have read previous of Bennett's diaries and enjoyed them hugely for their wit and insights. These trademarks are still present in this new volume, but, overall, there is a sense of melancholy, of a life having been lived. Bennett does not enjoy good health, has to use a wheelchair and is very much an observer at parties due to his lack of mobility. But hasn't he been an observer all his life anyway?
Bennett is extremely fortunate in having a group of willing helpers. Not only his partner, but those who help him sort out his books prior to a move; even the staff at Kings Cross station who assist him with his wheelchair on his frequent train journeys to Yorkshire, where he has a house, and is regarded as a local celebrity.
Occasionally, a jarring note will creep in . Almost in passing, he mentions that someone has poured liquid shit, again, on his bicycle saddle, Nothing more is said about this incident; homophobia, perhaps?
Another incident in which much is left unsaid, is Bennett remembering lying in his bed on the first night of his National Service and listening to other conscriptees crying. This is an aspect of Bennett's life about which he has not written much and it would be interesting if he did so, especially as the National Service experience is fast fading into the nation's memory.
Despite my good intentions about rationing my reading to prolong the pleasure of being in Mr Bennett's company, I raced through the book in four days.
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May 31, 2026Extremes are not edges. Extremes are easy. It’s edges that are tricky.
The best compliment anyone has ever paid my writing is ‘He knows what it’s like to be me.’
Poetry best because you can do more in less.
Lying in the long chair in the flat and looking through into the house I raise an arm and wave at myself in the sitting-room mirror. This is somehow a comfort.
A shot of Ben Stokes at the conclusion of the Test Match exemplifies everything I hate about sport. Having bowled out the last of the Indian batsmen he is doing the currently obligatory gesture of triumph, a skid on spread knees, hands clenched in triumph and with his mouth set in a snarl of victory. (Written before I realised it’s the eve of his trial for beating up someone outside a nightclub in Bristol, i.e. the John Terry scenario.) If I seldom want England to win it’s because of routine antics like his: we lose better than we win.
When Trump destroys the world those who are left will look at one another and wonder why nobody stopped him.
What is hard to take is how unsurprised people would be at one’s death, the only surprise these days being that one is still alive.
In the language of cinema as I learned it as a child, a rug over the knees spelled death.
If it's not necessary to change, it's necessary not to change.
A call from Radio 4 for my views on Assisted Dying. Answer: too near to the unassisted type to be keen on it.
The best compliment anyone has ever paid my writing is ‘He knows what it’s like to be me.’
Poetry best because you can do more in less.
Lying in the long chair in the flat and looking through into the house I raise an arm and wave at myself in the sitting-room mirror. This is somehow a comfort.
A shot of Ben Stokes at the conclusion of the Test Match exemplifies everything I hate about sport. Having bowled out the last of the Indian batsmen he is doing the currently obligatory gesture of triumph, a skid on spread knees, hands clenched in triumph and with his mouth set in a snarl of victory. (Written before I realised it’s the eve of his trial for beating up someone outside a nightclub in Bristol, i.e. the John Terry scenario.) If I seldom want England to win it’s because of routine antics like his: we lose better than we win.
When Trump destroys the world those who are left will look at one another and wonder why nobody stopped him.
What is hard to take is how unsurprised people would be at one’s death, the only surprise these days being that one is still alive.
In the language of cinema as I learned it as a child, a rug over the knees spelled death.
If it's not necessary to change, it's necessary not to change.
A call from Radio 4 for my views on Assisted Dying. Answer: too near to the unassisted type to be keen on it.
June 8, 2026
Looking back at records I seem to be getting more generous with my stars for Alan Bennett's print work... or rather, less niggardly. Anyway, this latest... perhaps last... volume of his diaries was very enjoyable. I am not a fan of thick volumes for reasons of patience and the discomfort of holding them but those thoughts never occurred to me and I rattled happily through.
At ninety his regret for his unspent youth still features, happily balanced with his well-spent later life with beloved partner Rupert. Perhaps I found fewer jarring opinions and, that scourge of memoir the simple judgment of others, gushing or otherwise... perhaps he's mellowed although he has a few rants I cheered (Moleskine notebooks for one) As he gets out and about less (and the diaries cover in part the infamous period of not-out-and-aboutness known as the pandemic) his life is more accessible to me. I found his various medical arrangements - where he goes private, where he doesn't - slightly discombobulating.
It was almost a disappointment to be tipped from 'Enough Said' to the additional pieces, though there's little wrong with them in practice just their location in the book.
At ninety his regret for his unspent youth still features, happily balanced with his well-spent later life with beloved partner Rupert. Perhaps I found fewer jarring opinions and, that scourge of memoir the simple judgment of others, gushing or otherwise... perhaps he's mellowed although he has a few rants I cheered (Moleskine notebooks for one) As he gets out and about less (and the diaries cover in part the infamous period of not-out-and-aboutness known as the pandemic) his life is more accessible to me. I found his various medical arrangements - where he goes private, where he doesn't - slightly discombobulating.
It was almost a disappointment to be tipped from 'Enough Said' to the additional pieces, though there's little wrong with them in practice just their location in the book.
Review of advance copy
I marked the book Read and went to start a review before I got a message saying I could not post a review as the books was not yet published, which is interesting in that I bought this from Foyles in London more than a month ago.
I have now read all of Mr. Bennett's published diaries, beginning with 1980 in Writing Home through 2024, which is where Enough Said ends. This is the first time I recall him noting that his diaries are comprised of thoughts written down on scraps of paper over the course of a year. He does not keep them in a bound diary, a phrase he uses in a dismissive manner in reference to Michael Palin's diaries.
Some of the entries were previously published in House Arrest, his pandemic diaries. But they take on a new life in a broader setting offering different context.
The diaries lag a bit in 2022 which Bennett acknowledges, a nod to the fact he knows his diaries are being written to be read and to entertain.
I have now read all of Mr. Bennett's published diaries, beginning with 1980 in Writing Home through 2024, which is where Enough Said ends. This is the first time I recall him noting that his diaries are comprised of thoughts written down on scraps of paper over the course of a year. He does not keep them in a bound diary, a phrase he uses in a dismissive manner in reference to Michael Palin's diaries.
Some of the entries were previously published in House Arrest, his pandemic diaries. But they take on a new life in a broader setting offering different context.
The diaries lag a bit in 2022 which Bennett acknowledges, a nod to the fact he knows his diaries are being written to be read and to entertain.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Alan Bennett could publish his thoughts on the alphabet & it would be worth reading! His diaries may be a little diminished because of the physical restrictions of advanced age, but that in itself is a reminder that similar decline will come to us all eventually as will having to attend funerals & memorials (though somewhat less glam than the invites he receives). Also still capable of withering summaries of his least favourite duplicitous politicians especially the foul Brexiteers. He talks much of friendship with Maggie Smith & Nick Hytner & of course his beloved Rupert. Additional essays on some select topics, my favourite being the photo albums of Roger Senhouse & the pic of Blunt & Burgess with the kilted soldiers, interesting! Lovely book & the man is quite simply a National Treasure.
May 3, 2026
Candid, moving, intelligent and thoughtful, Alan Bennett’s diaries are always a joy to read, and this volume, taking us through Brexit and Covid times doesn’t disappoint. Familiar themes are explored in new ways, with fresh reminiscences and more reflections on his life and career. What’s new is his honesty about his failing health, his worries about the quality of his work, and his increasing reliance on his partner, who he’s obviously besotted with. I can’t remember ever buying a book on the week of publication before, or devouring quite so greedily, and feeling so satisfied afterwards. I’ll add it to his other hefty tomes on my bookshelf, which I return to time and time again.
Review of advance copy
A thoroughly charming and endearing piece of writing replete with Bennett's whimsical reminiscences and observations as he enters his tenth decade with its attendant medical and aging issues. Still active, writing plays and attending functions while greeting visitors and friends, he and his partner, Rupert, travel frequently between London and Yorkshire and we are treated to his recollections and opinions on the important and the mundane. A charming book that only Alan Bennett could write. Loved it.
May 22, 2026
Alan's anecdotes, diary entries and whimsical notes on life never fail to impress. I've read every diary he's ever done, and I'll tell you something; a celebrated playwright he may be (and definitely is) but I personally think he's one of the greatest diarists in British literature history. As a Yorkshireman myself I may be biased but even in his 90s his books never fail to entertain, provoke thought, or teach me something new. Aan is a real national treasurebd and I've no idea why he's never been knighted.
May 13, 2026
Really enjoyed Alan's memories from over the past 8 years .At times very personal, at others very amusing. Love his very fond memories of his Mam and Dad . Great selection of photographs , a mixture of the famous and his early family days .Made me think of my parents and grandparents, what they lived through and gave me.
April 8, 2026
Five stars as I found it to be a moving page-turner, although I imagine it will not be to everyone’s taste. Love AB’s use of language, reminding me of the turns of phrase used by grandparents who lived in Nidderdale.
April 15, 2026
As ever, a delight to read. In addition to his observations on what is happening in the world, both near and far, this is an account of getting very old that we can all learn from; most particularly the lesson of keeping busy. You rust away faster than you wear out.
June 5, 2026
Another Diary from the great British writer.
This one covers 2016-2024 and covers lockdown, Brexit, Johnson, Trump et al.
it is the usual mix of stories, anecdotes and thoughts many of which are amusing whilst others are simple facts and events.
An enjoyable listen.
This one covers 2016-2024 and covers lockdown, Brexit, Johnson, Trump et al.
it is the usual mix of stories, anecdotes and thoughts many of which are amusing whilst others are simple facts and events.
An enjoyable listen.
March 25, 2026
Wonderful book as ever. A delight. Though quite why it’s called a bedside book, I don’t know. More like a door stop of a book. Full of fun stories. Love it.
March 27, 2026
As always these diaries are full of great stories , even his many health problems are dealt with , a man who may be modest but his talents are certainly not
April 15, 2026
I love the fact he tells us he’s grumpy, fussy and awkward. He also entertains me immensely. I’m missing it already. Loved it.
April 17, 2026
I adore anything Mr Bennett publishes.
This was absolutely fantastic. So witty and droll. Self deprecating and full of warmth. It’s like chart with an old friend.
This was absolutely fantastic. So witty and droll. Self deprecating and full of warmth. It’s like chart with an old friend.
April 29, 2026
I was sorry to reach the end. Reading his diaries is like spending time with an old friend.
May 2, 2026
Lovely Alan, delightful
May 8, 2026
Warm and comforting read, rather like a cup of tea - Yorkshire tea of course !!
May 18, 2026
I love the immersion into Alan’s world. His gentle delight in scones and landscapes and his dad’s words. His appreciation of kindness and absurdities.
May 24, 2026
As always Alan Bennet writes such good diaries. I can hear his voice as I read. Sad this will be his last.
June 1, 2026
Wonderful collection of Alan’s ponderings. Bless him x
June 14, 2026
As entertaining as ever but tinged with the melancholy of old age and its limitations.
June 15, 2026
A very enjoyable read.
Quote from 19th June 2018 : - ‘though we do the same things and often visit the same places we always have a good time, particularly in Norfolk.’
Quote from 19th June 2018 : - ‘though we do the same things and often visit the same places we always have a good time, particularly in Norfolk.’
June 17, 2026
Another brilliant selection of Alan Bennett diaries, covering covid and the lockdown
April 20, 2026
I so enjoyed reading this book, and there are some poignant lines / pieces that will stay with me, always.
I cried and laughed, and found his descriptions of old age, grounding.
I cried and laughed, and found his descriptions of old age, grounding.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews