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The Uncommon Reader
By Alan Bennett
Faber and Faber £10 99
124 pages
Dateline: 1st November, 2007
Like Her Majesty the Queen (or unlike if you're a Republican), Alan
Bennett is a national treasure. He also has a rare talent for mimicry.
The working-class Northern lad effortlessly demonstrates this in The
Uncommon Reader by stepping into the shoes of somebody whose upbringing
is not so much upper class as beyond class.
This is not the first time that Bennett has chosen to write about Her
Majesty. Many will recall Prunella Scales regally portraying her in
A Question of Attribution.
Some readers might question why we feel it appropriate to review a
short story on a theatre website. To an extent, this is self-indulgence
but there is little doubt that many readers will be genuinely interested
in a new work by Alan Bennett.
In any case, while this is ostensibly a whimsical fantasy told in prose,
it is actually also an extension of ideas that featured prominently
in The History Boys
and by its nature, has several obvious and some more obscure references
to the theatre and dramatists.
Bennett's premise is very simple. He toys with the idea that even the
Queen might be able to read and if so, she could become as addicted
to literature as the more learned of her subjects.
Much to the annoyance of her protective equerries, not to mention her
Philistine husband, after discovering a travelling library in her grounds,
the old lady becomes a fan of pretty much anything in print from Proust
and Dickens to Shakespeare, Genet and Wilde.
What makes this book interesting is the effect that this enlightenment
has on a woman, seen as the protagonist in a life-sized play, who had
previously hardly noticed the world passing her by.
Swiftly, she becomes a humanist thereby proving that the theory of
the wonderful Mr Hector in what is surely Bennett's finest play is correct.
Eclectic learning for its own sake through the medium of literature
will turn even the hardest hearted into a thinking, caring person.
This being Alan Bennett, the style is delicious and the comedy extremely
funny. There are also tender moments abounding in a short story that
should be on everybody's reading list, even that of the most august
occupant of Buckingham Palace, though she may be a wee bit taken aback
by the kind of final sentence that would have landed writers of an earlier
generation in the Tower.
Philip Fisher
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