‘I feel I am not yet grown up’: Alan Bennett’s diary of his 90th year | Alan Bennett

30 January 2024

Windsor. The royal dolls’ house at Windsor Castle is being revamped to include contemporary authors, a selection of whom have submitted miniature versions of their work, with a reception given by Her Majesty the Queen.

The driver’s name was Juliano and it took me some time to realise that the blank square on the back of the seat in front of me in the car, an Audi, was a TV screen. There is some delay outside the Henry VIII gate, where we spot Andrew Wilson waiting on the same errand, also early. I am astonished at the extent of the castle, first visited as a schoolboy in 1951 and again (though I don’t remember this) with Alec Guinness to look at the portrait of Thurlow, whom he was toying with playing in the film of The Madness of George III. At another portal a wheelchair is waiting, which I inhabit for the whole of the visit … comfortable but a mistake. Not pushed by Rupert [Thomas, Bennett’s civil partner] but by a young man whom I don’t see much of as he’s behind me. The entrance to the Waterloo Chamber through a loggia reminiscent of a Cambridge college library (St John’s). It is vast and gleaming, lined with portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence and a touch vulgar. A few other early arrivals. Everybody pleasant.

Tom Stoppard there and struck as I have been before by his noble profile. Many people speak, particularly the binders of the various tiny volumes, the room getting busier and HM the Queen appears without being announced, and mingles, chatting, admirable throughout. I am fetched in my wheelchair and told not to stand but this means that HMQ must bend over to speak to me. Recalls when she met me before at Clarence House, and we talk about libraries … very easy, no formality, forget even “Your Majesty” and “Ma’am”, none of the usual constraints of royalty so that now, remembering what I said, I would like to improve on it. She makes a little speech, introduced by Tim Knox (a friend of Rupert’s), he with notes, she seemingly impromptu, and with me the only author mentioned by name, possibly because I am in her eyeline. I talk to lovely Jacqueline Wilson, who tells me she is past the peak of her fame, at any rate with her publishers … but always memorable to me because at an event once she queued up to have her book signed. No real food to speak of and what there is so small it perhaps deliberately matches the miniature volumes the reception is in aid of, the tiny ham sandwiches delicious. HMQ having gone, we all troop down to look at the dolls’ house. Far larger than I’d expected, the house grander and nobler and pleasing, as architecture, the furniture and objects astonishingly intricate and minute. Rupert, who loved dolls’ houses as a child, is ravished and even I manage praise. The miniature books displayed next door. All proceedings punctuated by binders introducing themselves. My “book”, an extract from Enjoy, looking more substantial than I’d thought. I’d hoped to see Simon Armitage and Sue, his wife, but they were at some poetry jamboree. Give a lift back to Andrew Wilson, who in casual conversation lets fall a quote from Elgar that I may be able to use in [Bennett’s 2025 film project] The Choral. A lovely occasion and full marks to all.

10 February

The party I would have liked to attend is my own funeral. I’d like to know who came and what they said, who wept and who didn’t, and how long it took for friends to get over it.

24 February

I’m so looked after these days that sometimes home resembles a five-star hotel. When I go up to bed after supper, Rupert comes up behind me to make sure I don’t fall and sometimes giving me a push. I then brush my teeth in the bathroom while R goes into the bedroom where he performs the ritual turning back of the sheets so I can get straight into bed. It is almost literally the lap of luxury.

I do not always know nowadays whether I’ve eaten or not or whether it is time for bed. Yesterday, Rupert came up to tell me supper was ready and I was assuming he had come up to tell me it was bedtime.

1 March

It is absurd to say that I feel I am not yet grown up. I am not laying claim to perpetual youth (though 89 is something of a surprise), and youth I was never much aware of when I had it. What I mean is, there has never come a time when I could be thought to have acquired dignity, common sense, still less worldly wisdom, qualities that supposedly come with age and get lost with age, too. One doesn’t look for common sense from someone over 90.

I was most conscious of this feeling when I was briefly appointed a trustee of the National Gallery. (When I asked why, I was told it was because I was the man in the street.) My fellow trustees were all distinguished in their fields – commerce, art, public service. I liked pictures but looking round the table I could see I was there under false pretences. I’ve never had to chair a meeting or sit round and persuade otherwise-minded people to my point of view. I was in my 50s but I was not a grownup. Thirty years and more have passed but that conviction has never left me. I have a partner, a house and some standing in the community but none of it counts. When I enter a room full of people (these days a rarity) I am 16. Except in the even more rare occasion of entering a room of 16-year-olds, when I am 90. I have the credentials but I don’t seem to have the baggage. Once upon a time, I think I imagined age itself as an eminence, years were a plinth, it had prospects even if the end was clouded in mist.

A virtue of age is that it emancipates one from class. The old are in a class of their own. It also bestows a privilege of plain speaking.

3 May

To Harley Street. A small lesion by the side of my nose which Mr Groves had looked at under a magnifying glass. Not a problem but it ought to come out, the procedure booked for 8 August.

“Why do you smile?”

“8 August, back in the day. 1952. It was the day I went into the army.”

Oh. History. Two years’ obligatory service. Young men.

6 May

Bank holiday Monday. Lovely thing today: Annabel phoned to say they would like to ring a peal of bells on Thursday in celebration of my birthday. This is so unexpected I don’t quite burst into tears but certainly cry, which I’ve seldom done before, if ever, from pleasure. We know the bellringers a bit from our evening walk which sometimes takes us (just) to the churchyard on a Monday evening, their practice day, where we sit on the bench. But I rejoice in the compliment and what’s more don’t intend to be modest about it.

9 May

The great day dawns rather earlier than perhaps we would have chosen, as the celebratory peal of bells kicks off at 10.30. Hearing it get started I open the front door and sit on a chair to listen, greeting one or two local people who pass, some bringing cards so that by the time we struggle up to the churchyard it’s nearly 11. And it is a struggle, with some rests en route, sitting on the wall in the sun. Then we get to the bench, where I sit on a blanket under the (tremendous) noise. In the church the ringers are in the glass-fronted chamber under the tower. They finish ringing and come out and I say how touched I am. We all have our photographs taken. It’s a lovely warm day with the birds varied and deafening, my stomach on the edge but not so much as to dampen my spirits. Loads of cards.

After the bellringing, some cows come stampeding up the village street. I momentarily think they have been roped in as part of the celebrations but they have just got out, oblivious of the day’s significance. And when I think there’s nothing else to look forward to, Andy appears at Leeds station with a card from our regular wheelchair helpers – the Assistance Team, Andy, Andrew and Ian. Immensely touched by this. Encomium in the Mail from Craig Brown. Telephone messages from Alison Steadman and many more, and repeats on the TV tonight, though as always very late.

As I think I’ve noted elsewhere, 90 is not a goal – though I’ll save the cards as evidence of the affection in which I seem to be held.

19 May

Ninety may not be without consequence but nor does it have much consequence. Some effects of ageing not without interest … cataracts, for instance, which are not ready to be removed but which meanwhile etch the world in a jigsaw of lines. In her last years, Thora Hird would often claim to have company while at the same time knowing that no one was there. Scotty, her long-dead husband, for instance. She didn’t let anyone or herself think that this meant she was doolally. A good job she wasn’t living in the 17th century, when it might have got her burned.

22 May

Cecil Sharp House. Readthrough of The Choral. Ready to be depressed as I generally am on such occasions, I am bowled over, and so is Rupert, partly because of the inclusion of music (Elgar) and the atmosphere so upbeat and young. Roger Allam is excellent and where I’d been bothered about his northern accent it was flawless (and seemingly effortless). Ralph Fiennes not giving any hint of how he would play Guthrie, the chorus master and main part, and with an unexpected beard. (“It’s Chekhov,” N Hytner.) Clyde [played by Jacob Dudman] and the boys very good, the emphasis sometimes wrong but not irredeemably so. We sit beside Nick H on the edge of a huge quadrangle of tables, the reading kicking off with the usual circumnavigation in which everyone says their name and their function (“Alan Bennett, Author”). Rupert wanted to say, “I’m just here with him”, though I don’t know whether he was bold enough. Felt ancient and must have seemed so to the young actors – for one or two it was their first job – though everyone very friendly, coming up and shaking hands. Wish I weren’t so celebrated, as it’s a barrier, though Nick seems entirely at ease and this afternoon feels jubilant.