Alan Bennett - House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries

24 February Last week Rupert and his whole magazine were thrown into confusion when for no apparent reason the management enquired how many of the team could work from home. This was taken to be the prelude to some sort of shedding of staff. Today it transpires its less inimical than this, but rather a precaution. The coronavirus in Italy has meant the Milan office has had to close, the enquiry in case a similar situation should arise in London. This is thought to be unlikely.

1 March Thanks to arthritis Im now much less mobile than I was. Gone are the days when I could jump on my bike to pop down to the shops, so static semi-isolation is scarcely a hardship or even a disruption of my routine. Himself no slouch when it came to work, George Steiner once asked a Soviet dissident how he got through so much. House arrest, Steiner. House arrest. Alas, so far as work is concerned, I havent yet noticed much difference.

The only medical scourge Ive had any experience of is TB, or consumption as it was called then. The Sherwoods, a family that lived next door to us in Armley, Leeds, in the 1940s lost their youngest son to TB, which then infected his father, who also died. Unsurprisingly, this left my mother perpetually anxious lest we catch it. Mrs Sherwood was a good cook and often invited my brother and me to sample her dishes, which we were strictly forbidden to do. On one occasion, though, I succumbed (Yorkshire pudding) and foolishly saying so at home it was as if Id signed my own death warrant.

TB was to blame for other more bizarre prohibitions. We were never allowed to wear open-necked shirts, for instance, lest the cold go to your chest. Sharing a bottle of pop with other boys was another death trap, as was not wearing a vest or drinking unaired water.

TB was pretty well eradicated or controlled long before my mothers death, but she never ceased to think of it as the killer it had been in her youth. Always one to diddle her hands under the tap, she would have found the precautions against the coronavirus only common sense.

4 March HMQ pictured in the paper at an investiture wearing gloves, presumably as a precaution against coronavirus. But not just gloves; these are almost gauntlets. I hope theyre 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.

Jeremy Musson the architectural historian writes to me for any thoughts I might have about George Bernard Shaw, who has an anniversary coming up and with some refurbishment projected at his house at Ayot St Lawrence.

I talk to him on the phone, saying that Ive always wished Id written Pygmalion, not to mention My Fair Lady, but without being able to offer much more. I used to read Shaw a good deal (or at least take him out of Headingley Library) when I was sixteen the russet-brown bindings of the texts often figuring in my borrowings. I suppose, thinking about it, that I did absorb the notion that plays were a form of action, they were meant to do things, solve problems or flag them up and this I say to J. Musson. What I see I have in common is that I always enjoy writing the introductions more than writing the plays themselves. But whereas Shaw plainly thought his prefaces were on a par with the text, my introductions are more in the way of gossip, explaining why Ive written the play and the circumstances that have generated it. I dont think they are a contribution as the Shavian prefaces are.

14 March As an over-seventy, I am officially exhorted to remain isolated and indoors which is to say that my usual going-on now has governmental endorsement.

18 March The York Theatre Royals tour of The Habit of Art, the play about Auden and Britten that did well last year and was due to be revived for a festival in New York, has had to be cancelled. I write to the cast apologising and saying that one person who would not be washing his hands every five minutes is W. H. Auden.

20 March With Rupert now working from home my life is much easier, as I get regular cups of tea and a lovely hot lunch.

24 March A rare plane passes.

Rupert is upstairs on a Zoom call with his office who, like him, are now all at home.

Photo in the Guardian of a home-made sign at the entrance to Malham village telling or rather entreating the hordes of tourists to go home. In our village twenty miles or so away the car park is full and the place far busier than on a normal Sunday. So far from social distancing some of the visitors practically link arms. Still, it makes a change from brawling over toilet rolls.

26 March Around six Nick Hytner rings, highly excited. Piers Wenger (BBCs Director of Drama) has just rung him saying that though current restrictions make mounting any TV programmes difficult, he thinks it may be possible to do a new version of the Talking Heads monologues from 1988. Nick is ringing me (needlessly) for my permission. He comes round later and we thrash out some of the details in a conversation with him standing on the other side of the street. (Was this how King Lear started, do you think?)

And now R. comes with a cup of coffee and a ginger biscuit, which is what John Dawson of Bleak Bank Farm gives the vet.

10 April, Good Friday We have agreed that the cast and crew in the Talking Heads remount should do so for a token fee, with any profits to be given to the NHS. Im somewhat staggered to find that this amounts to a million pounds, possibly more. Its no skin off my nose, as I never expected the programmes to be repeated, but the financial sacrifice for some of the cast and crew will not just be notional. Astonishing though it is, this gesture passes without notice.

Good Friday, when this year Pontius Pilate is not the only one washing his hands.

14 April I give some basic notes about Talking Heads to all the directors, who are on a Zoom call. Some of the precedents from the first production are particularly inappropriate. The first director was Stuart Burge, who did Thora Hirds A Cream Cracker under the Settee and my A Chip in the Sugar. His method in rehearsal was to station himself a foot or so in front of ones face, simulating the camera and remaining there throughout. To begin with this was unnerving, particularly for Thora who had never had to accommodate herself to such rigorous technique. But when after a few days Stuart moved to the other side of the room, we had got so used to him that both of us felt withdrawal symptoms. Today such proximity is out of the question, so Im not sure my experiences are much help. I tell them if they have any queries about the scripts they are to ring and ask me but theyre free to make small cuts adjustments so long as they dont touch the jokes.

16 April A card from Tom King with news of the tattoo of me that he had put on his arm (pictured in the Diary published in the London Review of Books