The Uncommon Reader

by Alan Bennett

‘She’s not a popular author, ma’am.’ ‘Why, I wonder? I made her a dame.’ Mr Hutchings refrained from saying that this wasn’t necessarily the road to the public’s heart.

Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met with in the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader’s imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.