He notes being sent a new bio­graphy of Graham Greene, but he wouldn’t read it because he was never a fan. “I’ve been put off by the Catholicism showing through and his frequent ‘rare’ interviews. A ­darling of the Sunday papers in the l960s, he was always said to be retiring while in fact being avid for publicity.” He only met Greene once, when he came to see his play The Old Country, and Alec Guinness introduced them. He remembered that, “Greene’s was the limpest hand I’d ever shaken. Nor did he say a word about the play, for or against.” March. HMQ pictured in the paper at an investiture wearing gloves, presumably as a precaution against Coronavirus. But not just gloves; these are almost gauntlets. I hope they're not the thin end of a precautionary wedge lest Her Majesty end up swathed in protective get-up such as is worn at the average crime scene. Although he refused the former honour 25 years ago, given the quality of many recent elevations to the peerage including one bemoaned in this book, the House of Lords could certainly benefit from both his wit and wisdom. In 2006 I had the notion of what upset it would cause should the queen ever become an avid reader. A long short story, ‘The Uncommon Reader’ too was a pleasure to write. * The queen, dry, quizzical and absolved from any desire to be liked, is a gift to an author and the reader throughout is on her side. Had it been Elizabeth I it might have been a celebratory masque, as Her Majesty comes well out of every encounter, besting her ministers, her courtiers and even her devoted subjects. It’s always been assumed that the late queen didn’t much like the theatre, which can’t be said of her successor, who’s often to be found at plays, and if it’s a comedy, far from dampening down an audience, Charles’s presence and his loud laughter help to get them going.

Alan Bennett’s pandemic diaries: ‘Good Friday, and this year

Literary figures played a key role in some of the songs of Radiohead, and Thom Yorke has paid tribute to the inspiration of writers such as Ben Okri. The band were also influenced by Kurt Vonnegut’s 1963 science fiction novel Cat’s Cradle when composing their song “Nice Dream”. The Vonnegut link is one of the hundreds of intriguing facts in a new biography of the band, Radiohead: Life in a Glasshouse (Palazzo Editions), written by John Aizlewood, a music expert and editor of Q magazine in its heyday. Covering more than three decades, the book is a must-have for fans of this influential group. Rupert goes upstairs to do his Pilates on Zoom. His teacher lives round the corner, but she is currently with her husband in Canada. Still, up he goes in his T-shirt and shorts as it’s quite strenuous, and it makes no difference that she’s on the other side of the world.February. One doubtful blessing of my new and sophisticated hearing aids is that I can hear every rumble and gurgle of my stomach as well as the children next door.

House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries (Main) by Alan Bennett - WHSmith

The York Theatre Royal’s tour of The Habit of Art, the play about Auden and Britten that did well last year and was due to be revived for a festival in New York, has had to be cancelled. I write to the cast apologising and saying that one person who would not be washing his hands every five minutes is WH Auden.

In season the A65 is a busy road, some of the traffic headed to Burnsall and Upper Wharfedale, the rest of it en route for the Lake District. Out of season or in the evening we sometimes turn off to Bolton Abbey. One of the locations for A Private Function. Then on to Draughton where much more recently there would be a vase of flowers always fresh, marking the place of an accident and which Mike Harding made into a poem and was my inspiration for the monologue The Shrine in last year’s Talking Heads. So hot that even the gulls have fallen silent. At 92A (Dad’s butcher’s shop in Otley Road in Headingley) he had an antiquated fridge which ran on a fan belt. In hot weather the belt overheated, just at the time when, should the fridge break down, bankruptcy threatened. With the fridge full of turkeys, Christmas was another perilous period.