House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries

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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). As said I had already read this somewhere else, thought the book would be extra entries to his diaries of lockdown, but unfortunately not. TheBookAtWar by Andrew Pettegree is the perfect present for bibliophiles and history buffs alike – a fascinating exploration of the role of books in wartime. 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. However, the book really was too short to obtain a good idea of the author's thoughts during the lockdown periods.

Contemplating the current regime of hand-washing and elbow-bumping pitches him straight back to the 1940s when the unfortunate family next door succumb to TB.

The fact that Her Majesty could probably not manage this today is a reminder of how swiftly treacherous advanced old age can be. Bennett’s House Arrest, covering the Lockdown and Vaccination years, is little more than an Epilogue at a mere 49 pages – a bit longer than a Talking Heads monologue. The pandemic is the background and, indeed, the foreground to this latest and most slender tranche of journals, which runs to a mere 64 pages. His television series Talking Heads has become a modern-day classic, as have many of his works for the stage, including Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Question of Attribution, The Madness of King George Ill (together with the Oscar-nominated screenplay The Madness of King George) and an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, along with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose and broadcasting, and many appearances as an actor.

On 26 March of that first year, Nicholas Hytner rings with the exciting news that the BBC would like to record a new version of Bennett’s Talking Heads monologues of 1988 because it is exactly the sort of thing that could be done on Zoom. Less than 50 pages of nothing, there are a handful of snippets which appear to be going somewhere but immediately are snuffed out.

It probably never occurred to the hollering neighbours that their joyful noise for the NHS might be misconstrued as directed at one elderly, slightly famous playwright.

Our need for ritual is primordial, and embracing its logic can help us connect, find meaning and discover who we are. Across the world, and throughout time, there have been people who have risen to the challenge of leading others. Our national treasure at work during the pandemic – sharing his everyday thoughts, alongside his increasing physical infirmities, in his own inimitable way.On the phone to the optician about his broken glasses, he finds that he has lost the words, and his partner has to take over. 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”). In no time, however, I was drawn in by Bennett's spot on reminiscences and comments upon current happenings.