ALAN BENNETT DOESN'T much like giving interviews. When his publicist at the National Theatre is asked for clippings of interviews from the 2003 launch of his play The History Boys, she says there aren't any. 'He didn't do any,' she says. 'He didn't have to - it sold out before it opened.'
But with The History Boys set to have its Asian premiere in Hong Kong, the playwright agrees to waive his reservations (even though it's sold out here, as well).
'It's just that I don't talk very well,' he says, explaining his reticence. 'It isn't self-denying, but I tend to write better than I talk.'
There's another reason for disliking interviews. 'I don't mind being called 'Alan Bennett', but I resent being called 'Bennett', which is what seems to happen when an interview goes into print. It's as if someone's taken possession - as if people should somehow know what 'Bennett' implies.'
It's not surprising that many people feel they know what 'Bennett' implies, because for the past decade or more he has been publishing his dryly entertaining diaries in the London Review of Books, (later to become books).
So his life story - growing up in working class Leeds, enduring the slow tragedy of his mother's mental illness, his own more recent cancer, the lady who lived in a van in his driveway for many years, and his acute interest in theatres, churches and the delicious ordinariness of people's lives - has in a way become common knowledge.