Smut

Unexpected tales from the master of short fiction.

The Shielding of Mrs Forbes

Graham Forbes is a disappointment to his mother who thinks that if he must have a wife, he should have done better. And her own husband would be better if she were mourning him than living with him. But this is Alan Bennett, so no matter the importance of keeping up appearances, what is happening in the bedroom (and in lots of other places too) is altogether more startling, perhaps shocking, and ultimately much more honest to people's predilections. The Greening of Mrs Donaldson

Mrs Donaldson is a conventional middle-class woman beached on the shores of widowhood after a marriage that had been much like many others: happy to begin with, then satisfactory and finally dull. But when she decides to take in two lodgers (a young, broke couple) passions that she never knew existed are aroused, and her mundane life becomes much more stimulating...

About the Author

Alan Bennett has been one of the UK's leading dramatists since Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s. His television series Talking Heads has become a modern-day classic, as have many of his stage plays including Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Question of Attribution and The Madness of George III . The History Boys won numerous awards both at the National Theatre, London, and on Broadway. Also at the NT: The Habit of Art, People, Hymn and Cocktail Sticks. His collection of prose Untold Stories won the PEN/Ackerley Prize for autobiography. Recent works of fiction are The Uncommon Reader and Smut: Two Unseemly Stories.