Me and Mr Bennett

Do you have any favourite areas:

AB: I don’t have a favourite part, but I always liked the most numinous object in the Abbey, which is the pulpit in the nave from which Thomas Cranmer preached at the baptism of the young Edward VI.

In a long life the greatest privilege I have enjoyed is exclusive access to private places and the most exclusive is Westminster Abbey. While making three television programmes, I was often in the Abbey last thing at night and entirely alone. To be alone in a public place is, these days, a great luxury.

David Hoyle (DH): In the programme you really powerfully mentioned all the extraordinary juxtapositions: Pitt and Fox, Gladstone and Disraeli, Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots…I was alone there during Covid, and I found that you can identify your place there amid all these unresolved conversations. Convincing people of that is my job! 

What has the building meant to you since then?

AB: I’ve been in the Abbey several times since and have had to speak at various services, including the memorial service for Dame Thora Hird. This was a joyful affair, complete with Salvation Army Band which the BBC were foolish not to film. Dean Carr, though, was rather stern, telling me that if I spoke for longer than six minutes, he would cut me off. It was an admonition that had Victoria Wood and me in giggles by the pulpit steps, especially when Victoria regretted the absence of a Stannah stair lift.

Another terrifying occasion was when I was speaking at the commemoration of A E Housman in Poets’ Corner. I was glared at by Enoch Powell, who was a formidable classics scholar. He softened so I think I passed the test.

Visiting only occasionally nowadays, I find I’m wedded to the Abbey as it was when I made the programmes. I miss the old-fashioned wooden chairs, no ornaments but with a history of their own. Now they are just stackable. I still feel the Coronation Chair belongs near the shrine rather than the West End, not to mention the Stone of Scone which should never have been exported to Scotland. Michael Mayne  didn’t think so either. If it’s not necessary to change, it’s necessary not to change. 

Still, it’s a unique place and I am privileged to have figured in its multitudinous history, which is the history of England. 

You never found the presence of that many monuments oppressive, particularly at night?

AB: There’s so much to see. I’ve never found it creepy.  

DH: The building unlaces itself when the tourists have gone. It’s never done with you. You have to let it do the talking. Once it dawned on me that I couldn’t 'break' the building. It’s not always a comfortable place to be, but it’s muscular enough to be able to hold us.   

What's your relationship with the Church of England?

AB: Walking is harder nowadays, but going to churches was a leisure activity. As a boy I always liked reading about churches. Like Philip Larkin said, ‘I’m an agnostic, but an Anglican agnostic’.

What are your memories of writing and seeing The History Boys produced?

AB: I remember being given a bowl of mulberries on set by the gardener. I was very happy with the film. The boys seemed happy too as they had been in the original stage play. They didn’t write their own parts, but it sometimes felt to me like they did.   

DH: What’s your relationship to the play? 

AB: It was filmed in my old school, Watford Grammar, which is where I took my Cambridge entrance exam and learned to think for myself. It was extraordinary for me to see the classrooms I sat in on film. 

Do you like to look back?

AB: If you get to where you imagine, then you can’t write anything else. But a Brazilian author I admire said it best: ‘When I look back at what I’ve written, all I feel is an obscure feeling of repentance.