An eccentric old lady moves into a quiet street in Camden Town. There she remains, installed in her van in glorious self-sufficiency, until the council instructs her to move on. A kind homeowner invites her to move her van into his garden. A bizarre tale in itself, but when the homeowner is writer Alan Bennett and the lady stays for 15 years, it's a tale that provides the raw material for a book and a stage play. This is the fascinating story of Miss Shepherd, the genteel vagrant who found a unique place in Alan Bennett's life and writing. Adapted from his stage play and directed by Gordon House, this new version stars Maggie Smith, Alan Bennett and Adrian Scarborough. 'Truly brilliant and totally unmissable' - "Radio Times".
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Book Description
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.
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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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Life with an eccentric acquaintance,
By
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,
By
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.",
By 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
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