The fourth volume of certified national treasure Alan Bennett’s diaries finds him, as the title of the third volume put it, keeping on keeping on: still writing, still reading voraciously, and spending his spare time enjoying lunch invitations, attending plays and exhibition openings, and pottering around gardens and antiques shops. He admits not knowing “what ‘memes’ are or what ‘skanky’ means” and expresses bafflement at writers “pissing away every thought on a tweet”.
But our foremost man of letters is not your average grumpy old pensioner (how many pensioners can offer an illuminating dissection of Love Island or say they’ve been invited to participate in a Morrissey video?), and he’s eager not to be pigeonholed as merely “a chronicler of the toasted teacake”. Hence the frequent ruminations on sex, the startling declaration “I’ve always found amphetamines delightful” and the admission that he’s always tempted by “banal observations” in parish church visitor books to write “Boring as fuck” like a naughty schoolboy.
Bennett remains for the most part a mild-mannered, sensitive observer of life, coming closest to embracing the rage age on the subject of politics; Brexit is branded “cowardice” rather than courage, Trump is a “lying and bellicose vulgarian”, and the rhyming slang for Jeremy Hunt fits.
He’s also facing up to the indignities of his advancing years – whether the fact that “one’s ears get larger and one’s dick gets smaller” or shitting himself while shopping in Camden and having to go to old friend Jonathan Miller’s house to borrow an emergency pair of underpants.
Bennett’s diary entries have often been musings on the past, but his reflections are increasingly melancholy and poignant, prompted by deaths, funerals and memorial services. Now in his nineties, he frets about leaving work incomplete, laments getting rid of books he knows he will never get round to reading, and gloomily contemplates the prospect of spending his last few years “housekeeping and putting my life in order”.
“What is hard to take is how unsurprised people would be at one’s death, the only surprise these days being that one is still alive”, he writes ruefully. Hopefully Enough Said isn’t the full stop its title implies – but if it is, it’s a wonderful way to bow out.
