Keeping On Keeping On

Cleverer and funnier than any one person has a right to be ... inexhaustibly fascinating; Bennett has an eager, enquiring mind and a sharp way with words that can break your ideas open. * Sunday Times *
Is able to make the world dance with a single word ... On every page there is a phrase to make you smile, poetry disguised as comedy. -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *
Few diarists could offer such a consistently funny and touching authorial voice as Bennett. Long may he keep on keeping on. -- Ben Lawrence * Daily Telegraph *
Wry and eloquent ... screamingly funny... his sentences are always beautiful. -- Miranda Sawyer * Observer *
There is no other writer, certainly none from any other era or nation, quite like Alan Bennett, and having this much more of his work is an uncovenanted blessing. -- David Sexton * Evening Standard *
It is not only Bennett's claws that are sharp. So are his eyes ... confirms his reputation as one of the sharpest and funniest writers in the English language. -- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst * Spectator *
There is not a dull or uninteresting page here ... teddy bear he may be but he has a tiger's teeth. * The Herald *
An endlessly rewarding read by a man for all seasons and one who occupies a unique place in our culture and affections. -- Liz Thomson * The Arts Desk *
A fascinating exercise in modern history ... a superb collection, written from the unique perspective of an octogenarian at the top of his stylistic game, with a keen eye towards the past we have lost and the future we may yet inhabit. * Daily Express *
This latest anthology of diaries and essays is a beautiful, humane and honest collection of reflections. * Rachel Reeves *
Every piece here conveys the sense of an idiosyncratic and cussed mind, alive and open to the world -- Joe Moran * Guardian *
The literary equivalent of a warm cup of Horlicks spiked lavishly with whisky. * Metro, Books of the Year *
Fire lit. Hot, thick toast. Coffee. Reading the inimitable Mr Bennett. Happiness. -- Nigel Slater
[A] lavish miscellany ... appreciative, nostalgic and also hugely funny. * Prospect *
PRAISE FOR ALAN BENNETT: 'Alan Bennett, with his combination of pitiless observation and gentle understatement, is perhaps the best-loved of English writers alive today * Sunday Telegraph *
Intelligent, educated, engaging, humane, self-aware, cantankerous and irresistibly funny -- John Carey * Sunday Times *
Not only my book of the year, it is my book of the decade -- Nigel Slater on UNTOLD STORIES
Alan Bennett's work, which stands as one of the major achievements across several genres in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, demands the very best of us: not our praise but our attention. -- Ian Samson * TLS *