Smut by Alan Bennett

Smut by Alan Bennett

One of England's finest and most loved writers explores the uncomfortable and tragicomic gap between people's public appearance and their private desires in two tender and surprising stories.

In The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson, a recently bereaved widow finds interesting ways to supplement her income by performing as a patient for medical students, and renting out her spare room. Quiet, middle-class, and middle-aged, Mrs. Donaldson will soon discover that she rather enjoys role-play at the hospital, and the irregular and startling entertainment provided by her tenants.

In The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes, a disappointed middle-aged mother dotes on her only son, Graham, who believes he must shield her from the truth. As Graham's double life becomes increasingly complicated, we realize how little he understands, not only of his own desires but also those of his mother.

A master storyteller dissects a very English form of secrecy with two stories of the unexpected in otherwise apparently ordinary lives.

Alan Bennett was educated at Leeds Modern School and Exeter College, Oxford, where he read history. While doing postgraduate research he began to perform in cabaret, appearing first on the stage with the Oxford Theatre Group revue Better Late at Edinburgh in 1959. The following year he collaborated with Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore to put together the revue Beyond the Fringe which opened in Edinburgh and subsequently in the West End and on Broadway. Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, played for more than a year in the West End. Subsequent plays included Getting On, Habeas Corpus, and The Old Country, as well as the television play An Englishman Abroad. Alan Bennett's other best known works include his adaptation of The Wind in the Willows for the National Theatre, The Madness of George III (and also for the National and subsequently an Oscar-winning film), and two series of the monologs Talking Heads. His collection of diary entries, essays and reviews, Writing Home, was Book of the Year in 1994. Alan Bennett has made many recordings for the BBC, including The Lady in the Van, which he adapted for the stage and the cinema. His play The History Boys received six Tony Awards, and was adapted for the cinema that same year. Among Alan Bennett's more recent work are the stage plays The Habit of Art, People, and Cocktail Sticks, and the novella Smut.