Kaleem Aftab (20 September 2015). "The Lady in the Van – Film review: Maggie Smith shines in odd couple comedy". The Independent . Retrieved 26 December 2016. Mani Maran (13 October 2015). "LFF 2015: The Lady In The Van | News | Movies – Empire". gb: Empireonline.com . Retrieved 26 December 2016.

I have a Goodreads shelf called British Charm, and one of my favorites from that group is Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader, a delightful novella about what would happen if the Queen of England suddenly became an avid reader. My affection for that book inspires me to seek out anything Mr. Bennett writes.As you’d expect, Bennett recounts the story brilliantly with his customary humour and pathos - a story of an everyday life and again a story that whilst making us laugh out loud, also captures and conveys the oft absurdity of life and relationships. Occasionally she would write letters to other public figures. In August 1978 it was to the College of Cardinals, then busy electing a Pope. ‘Your Eminences. I would like to suggest humbly that an older Pope might be admirable. Height can count towards knowledge too probably.’ However this older (and hopefully taller) Pope she was recommending might find the ceremony a bit of a trial so, ever the expert on headgear, she suggests that ‘at the Coronation there could be a not so heavy crown, of light plastic possibly or cardboard for instance.’ In a 2019 production by the Melbourne Theatre Company in Melbourne Australia, Fairchild was played by Miriam Margolyes. [20] At night the impression was haunting. I had run a cable out from the house to give her light and heating and through the ragged draperies that hung over the windows of the van a visitor would glimpse Miss S.’s spectral figure, often bent over in prayer or lying on her side like an effigy on a tomb, her face resting on one hand, listening to Radio 4. Did she hear any movement she would straightaway switch off the light and wait like an animal that has been disturbed until she was sure the coast was clear and could put the light on again. She retired early and would complain if anyone called or left late at night. On one occasion Coral Browne was coming away from the house with her husband, Vincent Price, and they were talking quietly. ‘Pipe down,’ snapped the voice from the van, ‘I’m trying to sleep.’ For someone who had brought terror to millions it was an unexpected taste of his own medicine. PLEASE NOTE THAT, OUT OF CONSIDERATION FOR THOSE WHO SHARE OUR SPACE ON A REGULAR BASIS, THE ROYAL LYCEUM IS AN ALCOHOL FREE THEATRE AND WE ASK THAT PATRONS RESPECT THIS DECISION.

I thought, Jesus, it’s a wonder you’re alive…’ You cannot be vain when playing Miss Shepherd. The film was shot in and around 23 Gloucester Crescent (Bennett still owns the house, though he doesn’t live there), which was an experience that Smith found unsettling. 'It was haunting, and I also felt a bit guilty.' Miss S. wasn't the easiest person to deal with: "One was seldom able to do her a good turn without some thoughts of strangulation." Lady in the Van’ tells the unlikely and somewhat implausible although true story of the eponymous ‘lady’ Miss Shepherd, her various vans, other wheeled vehicles and how she ended up living for a number of years in Bennett’s driveway. April 1989 Miss S. has asked me to telephone the Social Services and I tell her that a social worker will be calling. ‘What time?’‘I don’t know. But you’re not going to be out. You haven’t been out for a week.’‘I might be. Miracles do happen. Besides, she may not be able to talk to me. I may not be at the door end of the van. I might be at the other end.’‘So she can talk to you there.’‘And what if I’m in the middle?’ She was to stay until her death 15 years later. In her van Fairchild would write political pamphlets for her right-wing Fidelis party with titles such as "True View: Mattering Things" that Bennett would type up for her and have copied in a local printers; he was concerned that the workers would believe that the extreme views expressed in the pamphlets were his own. Her political aspirations caused her to ask Bennett, "When I'm elected do you think I shall have to live in Downing Street or could I run things from the van?" [4]

During her 15-year stay in his drive, Bennett balances his writing career with watching over Shepherd and providing for his increasingly invalid mother. Though he denies "caring" for anyone, he slowly becomes aware of his growing friendship with Shepherd. After her passing, Alan decides to write a memoir covering the years he has known her. a b c Why a playwright let a homeless woman live in his driveway for 15 years – The New York Post 28 November 2015 Will C. Holden (4 November 2015). "2015 Denver Film Festival: 3 films worth seeing each day | FOX31 Denver". Kdvr.com . Retrieved 26 December 2016. In the interval between Miss Shepherd’s death and her funeral ten days later I found out more about her life than I had in twenty years. She had indeed driven ambulances during the war and was either blown up or narrowly escaped death when a bomb exploded nearby. I’m not sure that her eccentricity can be put down to this any more than to the legend, mentioned by one of the nuns, that it was the death of her fiancé in this incident that ‘tipped her over’. It would be comforting to think that it is love, or the death of it, that unbalances the mind, but I think her early attempts to become a nun and her repeated failures (‘too argumentative,’ one of the sisters said) point to a personality that must already have been quite awkward when she was a girl. After the war she spent some time in mental hospitals but regularly absconded, finally remaining at large long enough to establish her competence to live unsupervised.

Biography [ edit ] The former Convent of the Society of the Helpers of the Holy Souls on Gloucester Avenue where Fairchild was a novice in 1936, now the North Bridge House School. I read this pamphlet of a book two days before seeing the film... and gosh the film is so much better, partly because of the divine Maggie Smith but also because the film ain't the book!A gifted pianist, according to her brother, around 1932 the middle-class and well-spoken Margaret Fairchild studied at the École Normale de Musique de Paris in Paris under the virtuoso Alfred Cortot, and it has been said that she later played in a promenade concert; [3] [4] however, she does not appear in the BBC's online Proms performance archive. [5] Papamichael, Stella (13 November 2015). "The Lady in the Van | Film from". RadioTimes . Retrieved 26 December 2016. Miss C. thinks her heart is failing. She calls her Mary. I find this strange, though it is of course her name. She and her perpetually stalled van (or rather: a succession of such vans) could be found in his Camden Town neighborhood, parked ever-closer to Bennett's home. Justin Kroll (3 June 2014). "TriStar Productions Teams With BBC Films on Maggie Smith's 'Lady in the Van' ". Variety . Retrieved 26 December 2016.