House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries

Product Information

Bletchley Park may have been the perfect place to conceal codebreakers in the 1940s but the sprawl of little huts is. On the phone to the optician about his broken glasses, he finds that he has lost the words, and his partner has to take over. It brought home to me that HMQ (as she was billed in the programme) was a person like no other, a woman who has been everywhere, met everyone and to whom nothing comes as a surprise. Caustic and swinging between nostalgia and criticism of the present political system, it's only let down marginally by the surprisingly boring 'driving through Leeds' coda. 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.

House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries by Alan Bennett | Goodreads

Spain’s Socialist leader Pedro Sánchez has agreed a highly controversial amnesty deal with a Catalan separatist party.

The pandemic is the background and, indeed, the foreground to this latest and most slender tranche of journals, which runs to a mere 64 pages. Although this is a diary, Bennett doesn’t really say how he spends his days – staring out of the window, presumably, and remembering the past.

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

Plans to allow the Shetland Islands greater independence from Edinburgh and London have been backed overwhelmingly by. One of Scotland’s highest-paid public servants forgot exactly how big his salary was when questioned by MSPs. His thoughts on theatres closing and cultural outlets being on the brink of extinction are almost totally absent. The news that the cast and crew of the new Talking Heads series have agreed to take only a nominal fee and donate the profits to the NHS gives him a rare rush of pleasure in a world dominated by the bleak economics of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. Bought today and have no idea when this was published but it feels just like sitting with Alan Bennett for a chat.Rupert isn’t allowed in, and I go fairly briskly through a series of waiting rooms before reaching the vaccination room.