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A review by bearunderthecypresses
Keeping on Keeping on by Alan Bennett
4.0
This library checkout had to become a personal copy. Thanks to Auntie's Bookstore for supplying the personal copy. I flagged many sections, but here are a few of them: "The success of the History Boys (2004) was wholly unexpected. We'd had such a good time rehearsing it I don't recall ever wondering how well it would go down. Nicholas Hytner has said that on first reading the script he thought it would perhaps make eighty performances. As it was the reception of the play at its first preview took us both by surprise. It wasn't so much the laughter -- though at least twice it brought the show to a halt -- but it was the hush in the audience just before the curtain when the boys talk of their future lives and Hector comes back from the dead to give them his last message. When the curtain came down there was a moment's silence and then the house went up like a furnace." pg. 508.
"January 1, 2010: 'I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I'm not always happy with what I've done." pg 200.
"28 November, 2007: R. is reading Brideshead Revisited for the first time, my browning-at-the-edges Penguin that must be fifty years old. 'Tell me,' he says plaintively, 'is it meant to be snobbish or am I missing the point?" pg 129.
"It's getting near the day of Dad's death, too, and before we leave on Sunday we pick some flowers from the garden and put them on the grave where Gordon must have planted some bizzy lizzies, or begonias maybe. Think of Mam and Dad standing there smiling and also think of Anne next door whose chest is bad and has to go for an X-Ray on Monday. Easy journey back with the same towering high summer clouds. Between Newark and Grantham I always strain to see the towers of Lincoln Cathedral on the eastern horizon but never do, the only time I have when we were unexpectedly bussed from Retford to Grantham, when they were unmistakable in the last of the sun." pg 114 - 115.
"10 January, 2009, Yorkshire. I call in next door to have a word with the district nurses who are due to visit. It's after ten on a bitterly cold Saturday night and the two nurses are still on duty, washing and changing Anne, giving her her medication and settling her down for the night. And two nurses come again at nine the next morning, one of them the same nurse who had been on duty the night before. When one sees this level of dedication in the NHS it is both humbling and inspiring, and undertaken in such a straightforward matter-of-fact way, working round the clock not worth mentioning." pg 172.
"13 May, 2015. Talk to the (always cheering) Archie Powell. His four-year-old son Wilfred is learning chess and was recently taken to a Church of England confirmation service where the bishop officiating was Richard Charteris. Having ascertained the Charteris was a bishop Wilfred whispered, 'Does that mean he can only move diagonally?' Archie is 'easy' about religion but wife, Jane, like Rupert, is fiercely atheist." pg. 355.
"January 1, 2010: 'I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I'm not always happy with what I've done." pg 200.
"28 November, 2007: R. is reading Brideshead Revisited for the first time, my browning-at-the-edges Penguin that must be fifty years old. 'Tell me,' he says plaintively, 'is it meant to be snobbish or am I missing the point?" pg 129.
"It's getting near the day of Dad's death, too, and before we leave on Sunday we pick some flowers from the garden and put them on the grave where Gordon must have planted some bizzy lizzies, or begonias maybe. Think of Mam and Dad standing there smiling and also think of Anne next door whose chest is bad and has to go for an X-Ray on Monday. Easy journey back with the same towering high summer clouds. Between Newark and Grantham I always strain to see the towers of Lincoln Cathedral on the eastern horizon but never do, the only time I have when we were unexpectedly bussed from Retford to Grantham, when they were unmistakable in the last of the sun." pg 114 - 115.
"10 January, 2009, Yorkshire. I call in next door to have a word with the district nurses who are due to visit. It's after ten on a bitterly cold Saturday night and the two nurses are still on duty, washing and changing Anne, giving her her medication and settling her down for the night. And two nurses come again at nine the next morning, one of them the same nurse who had been on duty the night before. When one sees this level of dedication in the NHS it is both humbling and inspiring, and undertaken in such a straightforward matter-of-fact way, working round the clock not worth mentioning." pg 172.
"13 May, 2015. Talk to the (always cheering) Archie Powell. His four-year-old son Wilfred is learning chess and was recently taken to a Church of England confirmation service where the bishop officiating was Richard Charteris. Having ascertained the Charteris was a bishop Wilfred whispered, 'Does that mean he can only move diagonally?' Archie is 'easy' about religion but wife, Jane, like Rupert, is fiercely atheist." pg. 355.