Exclusive: As History Boys head for Leeds, hear Alan Bennett in conversation

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Funny, talented and prolific, Alan Bennett moved from the suburbs of Leeds to the inner circles of the literary glitterati without ever removing his tweed jacket or refining the flat vowels.

However, for a man who loves nothing more than confounding

expectations, his Mr Nice Guy reputation doesn't sit entirely

comfortably.

"I think that's true – people think that writers are nice," he laughs. "But really no writer's entirely nice, otherwise they wouldn't be writers. It's quite a sneaky profession really."

It's one that Bennett has mastered over the past half a century.

It was almost 50 years ago that Bennett joined a trio of Oxbridge undergraduates – Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook – to present Beyond the Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival. The show went on to London and Broadway and its performers on to legendary status.

While the other three achieved international stardom, Bennett has often spoken of the fact that he felt like the least talented and least

exotic of the quartet, yet it is he who has been taken into the national bosom with his writing which continually surprises and delights.

It's something that, at 75 years old, Bennett has finally grown comfortable with.

"A few years ago, just after my dad died, someone in the village was talking to someone I know and she said, 'Ooh the plays he writes and with two such lovely parents as he had'.

"I think that was a view some people had of my work. But I think it's a view that's probably died out. I hope so anyway."

In 2004, Bennett released The History Boys to the world. Premiered at the National Theatre, it was one of the biggest successes of his long career and one which led to a re-appraisal of his work.

His perpetual schoolboy image and soft northern voice (his Leeds accent is instantly recognisable and was used to great effect in the

recordings of him reading Winnie The Pooh) makes – or rather, made – some dismissive of Bennett. He was too nice to be cuttingly insightful and, as he has said in the past, being funny meant he was taken less seriously than he might otherwise have been.

The History Boys, which comes to the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds next month, changed that by being new-blade-sharp.

It tells the story of a group of students who return to school after their A-levels to take further exams to get into Oxbridge. Their teacher, Hector, a pederast who inspires the boys with a love of learning and molests them while taking them home on his motorbike, comes up against Irwin, a by-the-book younger generation of teacher.

Bennett is delighted the play is coming to his home town.

"In theory, it's set in Sheffield, but in a way it's to do with my own school days in the sense that it's about these eight boys in a sixth form and their headmaster wants them to go in for Oxford, which is what happened to me at what was then Leeds Modern School, now Lawnswood,"

he says.

"Alas, that's as far as the autobiographical aspect of the play goes – my history master was very traditional, he was a good man and a good teacher, but we didn't have anyone charismatic like Hector."

Ever self-deprecating, when asked about the success of The History Boys, he says: "It surprised me. I never thought it would go to Broadway, or if it did, stand much of a chance of success. I think it's on in Spain at the moment and in Brazil, places I never thought it would go.

"What was astonishing to me was that so late in my life I should have had such a success. I've been very lucky, I've had a long life as a playwright, which they don't necessarily have. The public go off you and I'm very lucky that hasn't happened."

While he allows himself to enjoy The History Boys, he says his series of monologues, Talking Heads, were as close to perfection as he has come.

The BBC recently screened a whole weekend of Bennett, which gave fans a chance to relive his work and Bennett the chance to revisit it.

"I saw some of it, the documentary I did, but they were on quite late so I didn't see all of them," he says.

"I saw Maggie Smith and some of Patricia Routledge and saw Thora's (Hird) monologues. I hadn't seen the second, Waiting for the Telegram, since Thora did it, so it was lovely to see that. She would have been 88, 89 at the time. She was reading it a bit from the teleprompt, but

she was so skilful, she was terrific."

Asked if he enjoyed a chance to wallow in the nostalgia, he says: "I have a slightly different perspective, I think, 'Oh crikey, I'll never be able to do that again'. People think your life's work is like a cushion and you can recline on it as you get older. It's not like that a bit.

"You can take comfort in what you've done, but it doesn't stop you wanting to go on and do more. Particularly with the monologues, which were somehow like poetry, they just came to me, and I could do them. And I can't do them now. I watch them and think, 'I just wish I could do more of those and I can't'.

"It's like Larkin and poetry. He said poetry gave him up towards the end of his life and I feel monologues have done the same to me."

Since the publication of Untold Stories, his collection of autobiographical writing, these days we know much more about Bennett's school days, and, indeed, his life since he left Leeds. In it, he talks about his parents, his mother's mental illness and about his partner Rupert, their life together and some of the homophobia they have experienced.

We also know that he survived cancer, but expected Untold Stories to be published posthumously.

He says, looking back on the 2005 autobiography, he has no regrets.

"No. Times have changed, I don't regret it at all. Also, it was luck or good medicine that I survived, so I was just grateful for that. Any price is not too high to pay, so I was very glad to be around when it was published," he says. "At the moment, I haven't got anything I particularly want to say, so there won't be another Untold Stories. I keep on with my diary and that's published in the London Review of Books, so that collection builds up."

He did, however, enjoy writing the autobiography.

"The stories in Untold Stories, I was able to do them because I knew the plot, I knew the story I was telling – plots are what screw me up. I find it difficult to get people on the stage, once they're on I can't get them off, so in a way Untold Stories was easier, because with that I knew the ending. In a way, it was relaxing to write an autobiography."

What he does continue to do, is return to Yorkshire fortnightly, to stay in the home his parents bought while they were still alive.

Talking about the fortnightly returns gives Bennett a quiet moment of reflection.

"I don't think I could live in the village, it's too quiet, I need something happening. My parents moved to the village in 1966, more than 40 years ago, so I couldn't not come," he says, then momentarily

pauses, before quietly adding: "It makes me practically the oldest inhabitant."

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