Gordon Bennett.

It’s been a bit of an Alan Bennett fest this week. I finally got round to watching ‘The History Boys’ on DVD and loved it, particularly the hilarious French lesson scene and the classic movie skits on ‘Now Voyager’ and ‘Brief Encounter’. I also polished off the short but very sweet ‘The Uncommon Reader’ and found the whole conceit of the Queen as a newly converted bookworm (despite staunch and virtually universal opposition by family, staff and even government), rather appealing. The sly digs at the unnamed Prime Minister about weapons of mass destruction lent this slim volume a bit of political edge, until it ends abruptly and entirely unexpectedly, with Her Maj dropping her own WMD to the gathered great and the good.