Two wry yet poignant novellas, one of which was published in the LRB, one brand new. Weird to see Alan Bennett characters using the internet and mobile phones, when AB himself famously has no computer - he uses a manual typewriter bought from a Bradford charity shop...

Enjoyed both, though they are more of the same sort of thing: an older lady discovers an unlikely new lease of life from a sexual 'arrangement' with her tenants to pay the rent, while another older lady is kept from knowing the truth about her gay son and her husband's affair with his daughter-in-law. The latter story is a bit more exciting, because there's a villain to defeat, one who wants to reveal all and tear the family apart.

If you're new to AB's fiction - which he himself started late in life, in the 1990s - I'd start with The Uncommon Reader, where these themes are applied to HM The Queen discovering a late love of reading. But these latest two are still vastly enjoyable.