Join us for a social literary lunch & talk on the talent of English playwright, author, actor & screenwriter Alan Bennett.

With a glass of fizz on arrival followed by a 2 course lunch, tea/coffee and a 30 minute talk delivered by writer Adrian Barlow, this event will be taking place at Broadway Golf Club, one of the finest courses in The Cotswolds. The dining room enjoys panoramic views across the Vale of Evesham to the Malvern Hills and Black Mountains.

‘Alan Bennett: the Eeyore of Modern Letters’

Alan Bennett has been one of our leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s. His television series Talking Heads has become a modern-day classic, as have many of his works for the stage including Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Question of Attribution, The Madness of King George, an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows and The History Boys.

90 on his next birthday, he has written:  ‘The real mark of recognition for a writer or any artist, perhaps, comes when the public wants him or her to die, so that they can close the book on that particular talent, stop having to make the effort to follow the writer any further, put a cork in the bottle.’

This talk will ask how we should recognise and define Bennett’s particular talent and achievement today, more than sixty years after his first appearance in Beyond the Fringe.

Adrian Barlow has been a teacher and writer all his life. He taught latterly at Madingley Hall, the University of Cambridge’s  Institute of Continuing Education, and was successively Chair and President of the English Association.

Tickets £40  (Limited to 48 places)

(to include 2 course lunch, glass of fizz, tea/coffee and talk)

Broadway Golf Club:

Speaker: Adrian Barlow