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A Novella
by Alan Bennett
Book Reviewed by:Author and actor Alan Bennett has a
long list of credits to his name. The youngest
generation might know him as the lugubrious voice of
Winnie-The-Pooh and friends in the BBC audio
recordings from the 1990s; the next generation up
are likely to know him as the playwright of The
Madness of George III, or the more recent The
History Boys (which won six Tonys including Best
Play); and the generation above may admit to being
old enough to have seen him perform with Dudley
Moore, Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller in Beyond
The Fringe (see sidebar).
The Uncommon Reader is not an insiders look
into the life of the person best known as the Queen
of England but rather an opportunity for Bennett to
play around with the caricature of the Queen,
familiar to most of us from comedy sketches and news
reels. If that is the case, one might ask what
distinguishes The Uncommon Reader from any
old late night comedy show? The answer is there's
simply no comparison - Bennett is one of the great
satirists of the English language and, now in his
70s, has honed his craft to perfection, developing a
style uniquely his own. It is immaterial whether in
real life the Queen is an avid reader or not (one is
told she is not) - her perceived character is merely
the foil through which Bennett can poke some
heartfelt fun and take the reader on a Queen's-eye
whistle-stop tour through the best and worst of
English literature.
Whatever themes an eager reviewer might be able to
extrapolate from The Uncommon Reader, the
bottom line is that it's really about the laughs;
but if themes are sought, they can be found loud and
clear. There is Bennett's "savagely Swiftian
indignation against stupidity, Philistinism and
arrogance in public places [which offers] a
passionate argument for the civilizing power of art"
(The London Times). Also, through his humane picture
of this royal icon, Bennett gently asks us to
question why so many of us are in thrall to
"royals" (and by extension, to anyone who
inhabits a famous body), when they are, let's face it, just
regular, flawed individuals, like the rest of us?
All this in a compact, always entertaining 128
pages.
Rated by BookBrowse members as one of your top 4
books of last year, The Uncommon Reader, is
an uncommonly good read.
A brief video interview with Alan Bennett about The History Boys.
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in September 2007, and has been updated for the
October 2008 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
If you liked The Uncommon Reader, try these:
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On an ordinary day, Edward’s world is turned upside down when he stumbles across a crate of family papers. To his horror, he discovers that nine previous generations of his family have come to sticky ends because of their noses. When he investigates---despite his grandfather’s caveat never to look into the origin of his nose---Edward ...
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