The Latest Breaking News from Alan Bennett

“I could see she was a good card to have in my hand,” director Stephen Frears told me when I interviewed him about The Queen, his 2006 film starring Helen Mirren as the monarch, adjusting to the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death. Yet neither he nor the movie’s writer Peter…

Toronto film festival: A-listers are tended to by formidable nurse Jennifer Saunders in Richard Eyre’s adaptation of the 2018 play about a struggling geriatric hospital

While the empire slipped away, society swung and privacy withered, she was steadfast, putting duty above all else

The monarch was sympathetically depicted by dramatists and at a 1999 production of Oklahoma! her eyes lit up when she recalled her own theatrical outings

It’s back and we couldn’t be more excited

Making his fringe debut with a show about a troubled standup, the actor explains why he loves solo performance, his issues with The History Boys, and why this government’s days are numbered

After two years of pandemic programming, with performers and audiences moved into virtual online venues, the Edinburgh International Festival celebrates its 75th anniversary this year with the best possible birthday present – the return of a full programme of live performances.

Other lives: Actor and writer whose plays were broadcast on BBC radio and staged around the world

From Jerusalem and Pretty Woman to a 70s Alan Bennett farce, unreconstructed attitudes and old-fashioned smut still permeate British theatre. And irony is not much of a defence

He was the first war artist to die on active service – and one of the greatest. Now, a new film, featuring Alan Bennett and Ai Weiwei, uncovers his complicated life

The official combat painter died in 1942 when his plane went down. Now his inspiring life story is the subject of a major documentary