In 1974, Alan Bennett encountered Miss Mary Shepherd, an elderly eccentric who was living in a van in the street near his home in Camden Town. He eventually allowed her to park her van in his garden, the idea being that she would stay three months - but those three months extended to fifteen years. Alan Bennett's funny and moving dramatization of his memoir of Miss Shepherd opened at the Queen's Theatre, London, in December 1999, starring Maggie Smith.