Alan Bennett - Keeping On Keeping On

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant as always

This is, of course, excellent.  Alan Bennett writes, as always, with wit, insight, honesty and a rage against injustice and fakery which gives this collection the same brilliance as Writing Home and Untold Stories.

Again consisting of ten years of diaries plus some longer writings, there are very interesting thoughts on some major events, as well as Bennett's intelligent and often very funny observations on everyday life.  There is real social comment here (his fury at police shootings is a regular theme, for example), leavened by the sort of Bennetry which makes me laugh out loud.  Two small examples:  having heard a critic on the radio say that he can have too much of Alan Bennett, his response is, "I wonder how he thinks I feel."  And, after an angry couple of paragraphs about the fatuous infantilisation and Americanisation of the Speaking Clock, "One tries not to be an Old Git but they don't make it easy."

Probably all that need be said about Keeping On Keeping On is that it's Alan Bennett and that he hasn't lost any of his ability.  I loved it; it made me think, it made me laugh and it gave me hope that there remains some civilization and humanity in the world.  Very warmly recommended.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)