Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner, Diversity in children's fiction, Yves Klein at Blenheim Place
Alan Bennett's new play Allelujah! is set in the geriatric ward of a Yorkshire hospital threatened with closure. It follows a singing, dancing choir of quick-witted elderly patients whose problem is not that they are ill so much as they have nowhere to go. Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner discuss working together and how Alan manages to take on big themes - English identity, education and now the NHS - without being, he says, a "political" writer. Blenheim Palace is housing a major exhibition of the work of the radical French artist Yves Klein, famous for his ultramarine blue…
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