His controversial remarks about British fiction are not that surprising once you consider his writing career
Mark Lawson on Bennett at 80: 'no national treasure'
An A-Z of Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett: a career in pictures
An A-Z of Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett: a career in pictures
Missing chapters … Alan Bennett. Photograph: Pal Hansen for the Observer
No 80th birthday party should pass without the birthday boy saying something embarrassing or naughty, and Alan Bennett duly obliged by telling Nicholas Hytner (in a BBC4 interview being screened on Saturday) that "I don't feel any of the people writing in England can tell me very much". What's more, "I like American literature more than I do contemporary English literature, Philip Roth for instance".
Authors whose reactions to his comments were garnered by the Times tended to sound like weary relatives of an elderly eccentric, from Susan Hill's telling-off ("why knock the whole of the rest of us? It is very silly and he will get so much flak for this") to Lionel Shriver's declaration that she adored him and he "has earned the right to say anything he pleases", and David Lodge's baffled diagnosis of self-delusion ("I'm a bit surprised … because his own work is so English").
Devotees of Bennett's annual diaries of the preceding year in the LRB will not have been surprised, however, by his indifference to "contemporary English literature", since he never mentions reading it.
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Authors whose reactions to his comments were garnered by the Times tended to sound like weary relatives of an elderly eccentric, from Susan Hill's telling-off ("why knock the whole of the rest of us? It is very silly and he will get so much flak for this") to Lionel Shriver's declaration that she adored him and he "has earned the right to say anything he pleases", and David Lodge's baffled diagnosis of self-delusion ("I'm a bit surprised … because his own work is so English").
Devotees of Bennett's annual diaries of the preceding year in the LRB will not have been surprised, however, by his indifference to "contemporary English literature", since he never mentions reading it.
More
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