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The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett

Paperback Audiobook (Cassette)   Audiobook (CD)

This is a true story about a Miss Shepherd, who in the 1970s lived in a battered old van opposite Bennett's house in Camden, London. After a series of attacks on her van, Mr Bennett suggested she move to his driveway opposite. Thus began an extraordinary 15 year association between the writer and a homeless old lady.

Given Mr Bennett’s screen writing career, the coincidence of the eccentric Miss Shepherd turning up on his doorstep could have been a writers dream but Mr Bennett certainly had to endure a lot of grief from her, not to mention her unsavoury living conditions !

I laughed out loud on many occasions about Miss Shepherd's bizarre adventures and her strange take on the world, like the time she decides to start up her own political party based from her van or when she cons the NHS out of a wheel chair and does wheelies down the drive in it and is witnessed lifting it up the curb. Anecdotes such as the following made me crease up:-

"On one occasion Coral Browne was coming away from the house with her husband, Vincent Price, and they were talking quietly. ‘Pipe down, snapped the voice from the van, I’m trying to sleep’. For someone who had brought terror to millions it was an unexpected taste of his own medicine."

This is a wonderful little gem of a book at only 92 pages long and 6 inches x 4 inches it is an ideal book to pop in your pocket or handbag. But be warned, don’t endeavour to read it in a public place as you will be unable to contain your laughter.