Untold Stories

I was given Alan Bennett's Untold Stories as a Christmas present. I'd read good reviews of it but have to confess that although I knew he'd written the recent play 'The History Boys' and the script for 'The Madness of King George' I didn't know much about him - he is, I think, a typically English institution.
Alan Bennett is variously a writer, an actor, a director and broadcaster. This book is a kind of memoirs/collection of personal writing about family, upbringing and social lives. Bennett writes in what is both an extremely personal and also reticent and understated manner. In some ways embodying that Northern manner of not taking oneself or ones concerns too seriously. Switching between pathos, humour and tragedy Untold Stories is a heavy (lots of pages and often serious) but by no means heavy-going work. His observations on life are very real and very finely captured - so all in all a lovely present to receive.