The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett (BBC Radio Collection Audio Cassette) [Audio Cassette]

Alan Bennett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 3, 1994 | Series: Radio Collection

Alan Bennett's most famous work of non-fiction. It is the history of Miss Shepherd, who in the 1970s lived in a Robin Reliant car opposite Bennett's house in Camden. After a series of attacks on her van, he suggested she move to his driveway. Thus began an extraordinary 15 year friendship between a writer and a homeless old lady.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...a wonderfully bittersweet comic diary of the years in which a lethally dotty and very smelly old bat parked her unroadworthy vehicle in Bennett's Camden garden, thereby providing him with a roughly equal amount of good journalistic copy and guilty landlordly irritation." Sheridan Morley, Spectator" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Alan Bennett's many stage and television plays and his prose collection, Writing Home, have made him one of Britain's best-loved authors. He has a huge international reputation for his plays and films which include: Habeus Corpus, Kafka's Dick, Private Function, The Madness of George III and many others a often multi-prize winning. But it is his fiction (The Clothes They Stood Up In --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: BBC Audiobooks (October 3, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0563393610
• ISBN-13: 978-0563393610
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,037,530 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alan Bennett is a renowned playwright and essayist, a succession of whose plays have been staged at the Royal National Theatre and whose screenplay for The Madness of King George was nominated for an Academy Award. He made his first stage appearance with Beyond the Fringe and his latest play was The Lady in the Van with Maggie Smith. Episodes from his award-winning Talking Heads series have been shown on PBS. His first novel, The Clothes They Stood Up In, was published in 2000. He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life with an eccentric acquaintance, June 30, 2001

By 

Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lady in the Van (Faber plays) (Paperback)

More than thirty years ago, lovable British playwright Alan Bennett encountered an eccentric and difficult old woman, Miss Shepherd, living contentedly, eccentrically, and not without troubles, in her van - in his London neighborhood. Bennett, intrigued by her and concerned for her safety (which was not always assured) subtly befriended her. Within a few months she had moved the van to a parking spot across from his house. She stayed for years and this slim book, first published in 1989 as a long piece in "The London Review of Books," is the story of their gently and sometimes humorously intersecting lives.

In subsequent years Miss S.'s highly individual sense of upward mobility would find expression, and there would be replacement vans. Miss S. was a Catholic who loved to paint her vans and favored yellow - asserting "it's the papal colour." She was sometimes demanding of Bennett's time, requesting favors and errands of him. She never said "Thanks." She revealed precious little about her past: only of her current opinions. She wrote and sold pamphlets on the street that she claimed were authored anonymously. She sold pencils on the street, claiming that her pencils were the best. She was given to fanatical religious and political pronouncements, and outrageous statements of prejudice and some silliness. Her right-wing politics clashed with Bennett's, and her comments on current events - reported deadpan, and verbatim - were often very funny. Old age and its freight of health and personal problems dogged her, and Bennett did what he could to help.

Alan Bennett is a great listener. In addition he can tell a story simply and clearly, with precision and understatement. He tells just enough. He encourages his characters to speak for themselves.

This is a great little nonfiction story that is tender but never mawkish - told with wit and elegance.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, November 17, 2008

By 

S J Buck (Kent, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lady in the Van (Faber plays) (Paperback)

'The Lady in the Van' is a completely true story. In the 1970's and 1980's outside Alan Bennett's own house in Camden an old lady (Miss Shepherd) lived in a Van in the street. After a time she could no longer stay on the street. Amazingly Bennett allowed her to move her Van into his garden and there she remained until she died.

This is a remarkable story, and its one of the funniest, yet moving pieces of writing that I have ever read. Bennett is a marvellous observer of people and his humanity shines through. Miss Shephard's living conditions were frankly disgusting (just think of the smell) and this would be enough to put most people off having any contact with her at all.

Bennett here has written one of the finest works of moving and poignant non-fiction I know of.

4.0 out of 5 stars "One seldom was able to do her a good turn without thoughts of strangulation.", July 22, 2007

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

Famous for his hilariously ironic comic sketches in Beyond the Fringe and Talking Heads, and for his recent Tony Award-winning play The History Boys, among other productions, Alan Bennett here gives some insights into his own life and personality. In "The Lady in the Van," he details the twenty-year relationship he had with someone who, under any other circumstances, would be considered a homeless person. In this case, Mary Shepherd is not "homeless" because she lives, unkempt but unfettered, in a filthy van--which she ultimately parks in the garden of his house. The van and its occupant remain there for years.

Beginning in 1969, when Bennett tells of meeting her for the first time, after she has parked her van on a lot across the street from his house, and concluding in 1989, with her death at seventy-seven, Bennett gives a diary of Mary Shepherd's life--and, incidentally, his own life, not as her benefactor (which suggests conscious "do-gooding" on his part) but as a person who respects the independence of those around him, even those like Mary Shepherd who challenge his good nature every step of the way.

The founder of her own political party (membership: two, including a nun suffering from Alzheimer's), writer of political tracts (which she sells, along with pencils), devoutly religious dropout from a convent, and fiercely independent challenger of "the system," Miss Shepherd lives without sanitary facilities, in a series of vans (each of which she paints yellow, "the papal color").

As Bennett describes her colorful clothing and headgear (all of it foully odoriferous) and the unsanitary conditions under which she chooses to live, the reader is aghast at Bennett's tolerance and ability to continue letting Miss Shepherd live her own life on her own terms--and on his property.

Respectful of his subject, while selecting details which reveal her unique (and impossibly difficult) qualities, Bennett shows himself to be genuinely caring and thoughtful--and perhaps the only person in England who could have tolerated the lifestyle Miss Shepherd brought to his yard. n Mary Whipple