In some ways, the exact opposite of Dave Barry's year-end roundup
December 31, 2016 11:44 AM   Subscribe

Alan Bennett publishes excerpts from his diaries each year, and the 2016 review is available for online users now. Relive previous years: 2015, 2014, 2013. Note: moderate amount of swears, frank discussion of the news. Audio material included, but not compulsory.
posted by blnkfrnk (7 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
When I clicked the link in the post, I got a message that said I had to submit my e-mail address to get the whole article. After going to the main LRB website and clicking the link on the front page, I could see the entire text. Now everything's working fine. So if you get the same message as me, just click on the London Review of Books header and follow the link from there.
posted by Kattullus at 12:05 PM on December 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


That's odd, it worked in browser and on mobile for me. I wonder why. Thanks for the workaround!
posted by blnkfrnk at 12:25 PM on December 31, 2016


23 May. I don’t have much time for Moleskine notebooks and the snobbery of stationery. Quite risky too. Writers who make a fuss about their notebooks are halfway to thinking that their jottings are Literature and headed towards posterity.

Lovely. Just lovely.
posted by Splunge at 12:32 PM on December 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


7 September. Ed Kemp rings, thoughtfully it seems to me, to say that his mother has died aged 91. She was the widow of Eric Kemp, my tutor at Exeter College and later bishop of Chichester, though I don’t recall meeting her in Oxford, but only in Chichester where, though she was the bishop’s wife, she enjoyed working as an usherette in the theatre and thus (I hope) scandalising that Trollopean place.

Thank you, blnkfrnk; this is delightful.
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:36 PM on December 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


As R. says, the 1980s was such a simple world and the villains so plain, whereas these days it’s the system itself that seems unshiftable.

That rings true. But then, I was only 12.
posted by klanawa at 12:59 PM on December 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


24 June. The day after the referendum, I spend sitting at the kitchen table correcting the proofs of Keeping On Keeping On, finishing them before going to Yorkshire in despair. I imagine this must have been what Munich was like in 1938 – half the nation rejoicing at a supposed deliverance, the other stunned by the country’s self-serving cowardice. Well, we shall see.

So damn true here as well. We shall see, indeed.
posted by Splunge at 1:39 PM on December 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


If you hit the back button and then click the link again it unlocks, or did for me.

Loved History Boys, this journal is delightful.
posted by benadryl at 4:38 PM on December 31, 2016


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