Alan Bennett never expected to be writing in his 90s, with a novella published next week and a film in post-production. There was a time when he didn’t expect to reach 70. In 1997, a cancerous growth was found in his colon that had already begun to spread.
“The surgeon didn’t think I’d got a chance, really,” recalls Bennett, 27 years on. “So yes, it is a slight surprise that I’m 90.” He attributes these bonus decades to two younger men: his partner, the magazine journalist Rupert Thomas, 58, and the director , 68, with whom he has worked on 11 theatre and screen projects.
“It was luck that I met Rupert – over a shared taste in paintings, really – and also that I met Nick, more or less at the same time, around 30 years ago. It’s been the best period of my life. Without Rupert and Nick, I’d be nothing, I think.
” Although Bennett and Hytner had already collaborated on The Madness of George III, which premiered at the National Theatre in 1991, Bennett dates his creative renaissance to (2004), his most commercially and critically successful work, about a group of Leeds sixth formers and their eccentric teacher, Hector. “I’d long given up hope of writing anything really fresh, but it was so enjoyable. The actors treated me as part of the cast.
The first preview was my 70th birthday and I couldn’t believe I was still going at that age.” Twenty birthdays later, he still is. The only concession to the decades is that he apologises for not getting up.
