The definitive chronicler of a certain kind of English ordinariness

That master of letters [don't call him a "national treasure", whatever you do!] Alan Bennett celebrates his 85th birthday today...

As the BFI describes him:

It's hard to pigeonhole Alan Bennett, and correspondingly easy to undervalue his achievements. Although one of the most recognisable writers of his generation, his unassumingly owlish persona and fondness for self-deprecation has created the impression of a lovably eccentric minor talent, whose amusingly droll plays about elderly Northern women (typically played by Thora Hird) and fusspot secretaries (Patricia Routledge) are merely one step up from sitcom. The idea that he might be the most important and innovative British television playwright since Dennis Potter initially seems laughable.

But it's hard to think of a stronger contender. His prolific output includes individual television plays, television series and cinema films, together with numerous stage works, short stories, assorted journalism and his inimitable diaries. An Englishman Abroad and the two Talking Heads series are regularly cited amongst British television's greatest achievements, and he is widely recognised as the master of the television monologue.

Furthermore, his work is generally darker, harsher and more satirically barbed than his (deeply resented) 'national treasure' status and peerless ear for the eccentricities of Yorkshire dialect and workplace gossip would suggest. Often, what looks like endearing shyness is closer to full-blown paranoia (Kafka is a character in two plays, and his shadow looms over several more), with family life either fractious or awkwardly silent, his elderly characters often facing a lonely, neglected death. His ability to get under the skin of such withdrawn people and write about them with such empathy, compassion and wry (often gallows) humour makes him not just a great writer but the definitive chronicler of a certain kind of English ordinariness, whose outwardly placid surface conceals inner turmoil as intense as anything displayed by the more emotionally articulate.

So very true. That is why we adore him.

Mr Bennett is as much an embedded part of British culture as cricket, Churchill, drinking tea or Thomas Arne - and his observations on such intrusive modern inventions as television [tongue-in-cheek observations, needless to say] are a joy:

A Night in With Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett watches Love Island

Many happy returns, Alan Bennett (born 9th May 1934)