His thoughts on theatres closing and cultural outlets being on the brink of extinction are almost totally absent. In November 2020 he notices that the Queen, nearly 10 years his senior, is able to walk backwards when laying a wreath at the Cenotaph. Our need for ritual is primordial, and embracing its logic can help us connect, find meaning and discover who we are. Bennett is such a master of the mundane I actually would have relished reading about what he did in that first lockdown when the world shrank for everyone. Illustration: Barry Falls/The Observer View image in fullscreen ‘His writing remains as deft and seamless as ever’ … Alan Bennett.

He made his first stage appearance with Beyond the Fringe and his latest play was The Lady in the Van with Maggie Smith. Given that 86-year-old Bennett is hobbled with arthritis, this is hardly an ambitious excursion – literally three minutes “round the block” of their north London street. In no time, however, I was drawn in by Bennett's spot on reminiscences and comments upon current happenings. There is something about this early lesson in the danger that other people pose that contributes to the impression Alan Bennett always gives of having been primed for apartness.Although billed as a Pandemic Diary, other than having an inoculation and the odd socially distanced conversation, there was little relevant to those times and concerns. Later, arriving at the vaccination centre for his first jab, Bennett firmly announces that he is here “for the virus” (in his defence, he points out that both of them are “v words”). I hope they're not the thin end of a precautionary wedge lest Her Majesty end up swathed in protective get-up such as is worn at the average crime scene. I spent a pleasant half hour reading this but it's not as jaunty as his diaries have been in the past and the constraints of the pandemic and ageing mean that much of his reflection now relates to past rather than present encounters.

Lacking any real insight or substance this collection of diary entries will likely leave you feeling slightly short-changed. The entries begin on 24 February 2020, with the diarist chipper about the unlikelihood of the new virus in Milan having much effect on London living, and chunter on to the autumn of 2021 when the crisis appears to be in the rearview mirror (we know, although he does not, that Omicron is lurking in the wings).His 2009 play, The Habit of Art , received glowing reviews and was broadcast live the following year by National Theatre Live. House Arrest - Pandemic Diaries' (2022) - is a very lovely, although very short (coming in at less than 50 pages) collection taken from Alan Bennett's diaries of the time. As always, I found Alan Bennett's writing style and social observations delightful, poignant and amusing but the book is so short that I felt a real sense of disappointment when I reached the end of his reflections, leaving me with a feeling of having been 'cheated'! Using words such as 'lovely' and 'charming' here to describe'House Arrest', could make Bennett's book sound trite or suggest that it somehow lacks depth, but it is neither of the things and as with everything from Alan Bennett - well worth your time.

Felt like a contractual obligation was being fulfilled with this very slight and disjointed melange.Okay obviously it’s Allan Bennet so knew what was coming ,however I thought it would be far longer in content than it was . TheNotebook by Roland Allen is a gorgeously illustrated cultural history of the humble notebook, from the bustling markets of medieval Florence to the quiet studies of our greatest thinkers. Always a privilege to have the insight into someone’s diaries and in a way it feels like diaries during the height of the pandemic are even more intimate and personal than others.

A fair few random memories thrown in from Alan's childhood with no context to the current era in which he is writing. The film of The Lady in the Van starring Maggie Smith was released in 2015, sending Bennett's memoir of the same name to the top of the bestseller list for nine weeks. The book is his personal diary of his time during the lockdown, and he seems to have survived it splendidly. Some really touching and poignant moments in here; a few bits that stand out are when Bennett has a small interaction with a stranger sweeping the street that “makes his morning” (such interactions being rare at that point), a footnote in a poem in LRB triggering a vivid childhood memory from 1941 (genuinely fascinating and one of my favourite things is when a tiny snippet evokes mass nostalgia), and when he struggles to explain how his glasses have broken to an optician because of the lack of speaking he’s done to other people during 2020 (definitely remember making some pretty awful blunders for a good few months until I worked out how to socialise again).

He recounts a telling anecdote from 1941 in which the whole family went on a Sunday fishing expedition in the country. Discover your next non-fiction read and brilliant book gifts in the Profile newsletter, and find books to help you live well with Souvenir Press. A lyrical afterword describes the journey home to Yorkshire from King's Cross station via fish and chips on Quebec Street, past childhood landmarks of Leeds, through Coniston Cold, over the infant River Aire, and on. Boris Johnson’s nightly addresses during the Pandemic are “ pretty pointless… a poor orator and speaker generally… the plainness of Keir Starmer a relief.