A thought on reading, and what it can do to you

“Briefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.”
— Alan Bennett

The British playwright Alan Bennett put these words in no less than the mouth of Queen Elizabeth II, for a short story called The Uncommon Reader. It imagined the Queen stumbling upon a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace, and then what happens when Her Majesty’s reading takes her to places she could not have imagined. Reading changes how she thinks and looks at life.

It’s a terrific story. I first heard it as an audiobook a few years ago, and connected with many of its points — including that it is never too late to let a book take you somewhere (often to another book).

The Uncommon Reader was published in 2007 in the London Review of Books, and can be read in full here.

In the scene for this quote, her private secretary says the Queen can be briefed on things. Her response speaks to the great discovery that she makes as a reader, uncommon or otherwise.

Here’s a video of Bennett reading that very part of the story, cued up for you.

In his An Englishman Abroad, Bennett wrote, “If you live to be ninety in England and can still eat a boiled egg they think you deserve the Nobel Prize.”

Bennett turned 90 in May 2024.

What a career he has had, and a body of work: one of the revolutionaries of Beyond the Fringe in the Sixties (he is the only surviving member), and then writing novels, stories, plays and films.

One of his best-known works is Talking Heads, a series of monologues in which, for the original televised series in 1988, he performed one of them himself. Called A Chip in the Sugar, it’s about a middle-aged man living with his aging mother, and terrified of her romantic happiness.

Here’s that performance, for the BBC.