Soins intensifs

Beginning life as a 1982 BBC TV screenplay entitled Intensive Care, Father! Father! Burning Bright was subsequently transformed into prose by Alan Bennett "in the hope of finding more to the character" Midgley than had emerged from its screen version. The result is vintage Alan Bennett. Father! Father! Burning Bright is a bittersweet comedy of manners based on the humdrum existence of Denis Midgley, an ineffectual schoolteacher reviled by his elderly father, bored wife and dull pupils, who is abruptly pulled from a parent's evening to be told that his father is dying. "On the many occasions Midgley had killed his father death had always come easily". When fantasy fades and reality bites, however, Midgley finds himself reassessing his relationship with his father as he clings to life and Midgley camps outside the under-resourced hospital that pays scant attention to the life or death of Midgley senior. As bored relatives shuffle in and out, Midgley strikes up an unlikely relationship with Nurse Valery that leads to an unlikely victory for Midgley's father. Told with Bennett's trademark spareness and laconic approach to life, death and life up north, Father! Father! Burning Bright is a perfect introduction to Bennett's writing. --Jerry Brotton