Alan Bennett kept his suffering to himself 'because cancer, like any other illness, is a bore'

The nation's most cherished playwright bares his soul in a new book. Stephen Khan reports

Bennett said that his tumour had been "the size of an average rock bun" and that medics had given his chances of survival as about one-in-five. Yet in his new autobiography, Untold Stories, Bennett writes: "Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore." A close group of friends managed to keep the illness a secret until now because he did not "want to die in the pages of a newspaper".

Reacting to Bennett's revelation, Lord Bragg, who has interviewed him for a forthcoming South Bank Show, said: "I knew he had cancer, yes, but I had no idea how serious it was. I didn't know that it had been life threatening.

"Alan told me that it spurred him on to write things that he wouldn't otherwise have written - things that were more personal and part of his life, to do with his family and his relationship. Alan is very private. He wants to be known for what's in print and he hadn't wanted this in print until now. People knew about it but they kept quiet."

In the book, Bennett paints a shocking portrait of the long, slow death of his mother in a care home and describes how he discovered, years after he died, that his grandfather had committed suicide.

Yet it is the fight against cancer that has surprised the arts community. Many people who knew him were not even aware he had the disease.

"I did not see cancer as a way of dramatising my life," wrote Bennett, 71. He added he was surprised even now "to be around" and cannot believe his luck will hold. While he is "cheerful" he does not dare "rejoice" or think he is cured.

For a time, the struggle curtailed Bennett's creativity. However, the writer managed to write memoirs and make a new will. And a second series of his dark monologues Talking Heads was put into production for television, as months of chemotherapy and surgery began.

He subsequently wrote a new work of fiction, The History Boys, that was viewed as a huge success at the National Theatre in 2004.

During the fraught period when he was receiving treatment the writer's partner, Rupert Thomas (pictured above), cared for him and then became his live-in companion. It was "far and away the most blessed" mercy of the time, said Bennett.

Meanwhile, his friend the late Sir Alec Guinness was apparently "surprised and even disappointed" to see that the chemotherapy had not caused the playwright to lose his impressive mop of hair.

Experiencing both private and NHS hospitals, he came to the conclusion that "the medical care and food are no better and with the NHS there are more jokes".

There were no laughs though in the residential home in Weston-super-Mare where his mother, Lilian, spent her final years. The bleak, desperate end to life that awaits those cast into care can rarely have been portrayed as powerfully.

Her long, lingering departure provides a platform for a critique of what will be the last port of call for tens of thousands of us. "There is something not quite right about homes for the elderly," opines Bennett, who observes that staff do not feed patients properly and fail to notice when they are not feeding themselves. "Lacking one-to-one care, these helpless creatures slowly and quite respectably starve to death."

For all the delivery is typically mild, the result is a stinging assessment of managed human decline. Identity gradually slips away, closely followed by memory. "It isn't only the cardigan and the frock that aren't hers. She has even acquired someone else's name. The nurses, who aren't really nurses but just jolly girls who don't mind this kind of job, aren't over-particular about names and call her Lilly."

Yesterday, representatives of the care-home sector defended the establishments and their employees. Frank Ursell, the chief executive officer of the Registered Nursing Home Association, said: "It is very easy to point out that people lack one-to-one care, but even if you employed people on minimum wages it would cost £840 a week to provide that." He added that the quality and level of staffing were good. "My experience is that people are better looked after in nursing homes than in hospitals."

Yet Bennett's is an account of a lonely mother that will send chills of fear or pangs of guilt through all who read it. Finally, the chapter ends.

"As a boy I could not bear to contemplate her death. Now when it happens, I almost shrug. She dies in 1995, I think."

The Bennett biography

Born: 9 May 1934 in Armley, Leeds, the son of a butcher.

Educated: Earned an Oxford scholarship in the mid-1950s. Was a history don for a while.

First success: Starred in and co-authored Beyond the Fringe with Dudley Moore, Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller at the Edinburgh Festival. The show was credited with starting the satire revolution.

Controversies: He had an affair with his cleaning lady. It had been assumed that Bennett was gay.

Career highs: An Englishman Abroad and the two Talking Heads series. His biggest theatrical success was The Madness of George III. The screenplay was nominated for an Oscar.

Career lows: Not even in the top 20 of a 1998 National Theatre ranking of the century's greatest playwrights. In 2001 Bennett complained of writer's block. But, three years later, The History Boys won the Olivier award for best new play.

In the words of the critics: According to many he is a national treasure. Also a "national teddy bear" (Francis Wheen), "curmudgeon laureate" (Mark Jones), and "Oracle of Little England" (Matthew Norman)".