It is more than charming, laced with literary insight, political insight, and a skewering of caste, class, and stuffy, mindless protocol-not to mention the less obvious trials of being the Queen of England. Surely, tugged by determined corgis, she might have stumbled upon a bookmobile in Westminster one day.įrom there, the story takes off. Surely she regretted her lack of formal education when pressed into conversation with artists and intellectuals. Surely her fine, brisk mind grew bored with ceremony, though she could never admit it. Written years before her death, the novella is spun from whole cloth, yet it resonates with all we know of her, and all we suspect. That theatrical sense of pacing and dialogue keeps The Uncommon Reader sparkling, even (or perhaps especially) during the Queen’s internal monologues. Primarily a playwright, Bennett won acclaim for The History Boys and The Madness of George III. Bennett’s uncommon reader is the Queen herself, and he is guessing what might unfold if she became an avid, serious reader. The Common Reader draws its name from an essay by Virginia Woolf. I listened with half an ear given my day job, I was already hooked by the title. Reminded of the book when Queen Elizabeth died, a friend gushed about its delightful, slyly funny plot. That bit of dialogue comes early in The Uncommon Reader, a novella by Alan Bennett that was published back in 2007. “Homosexual and jailbird, was he nevertheless as bad as he was painted? Or, more to the point,” and she took up her soup spoon, “was he as good?” “I’ve been longing to ask you about the writer Jean Gent,” Queen Elizabeth said chattily to the president of France.

Alan bennett the queen