The Lady in the Van: A BBC Radio 4 adaptation Audiobook (Free)

Maggie Smith celebrities with this BBC radio version of Alan Bennett’s highly acclaimed autobiographical stage play

An eccentric old lady moves into a quiet road in Camden Town. There she remains, set up in her van in glorious self-sufficiency, until the council instructs her to go on. Then a kind property owner invites her to go her vehicle into his garden – where she remains for the next fifteen years. This is the fascinating story of the genteel vagrant who found a unique place in Alan Bennett’s about THE GIRL in the Van: A BBC Radio 4 adaptation life and composing.

But the play is as very much about the writer himself as Miss Shepherd. Why did Alan Bennett let her commandeer his driveway? Was he performing out of kindness, weakness, or hidden guilt over not spending plenty of time with his very own mother? Did he usually subconsciously plan to exploit Miss Shepherd for literary profit? Thought-provoking and shifting, THE GIRL in the Vehicle tackles profound questions about public responsibility, homelessness and mental disease with a lightness of contact quality of Bennett the professional storyteller.

With a full cast including Adrian Scarborough, Marcia Warren and Alan Bennett, this bitter-sweet comic tale stars Maggie Smith as Miss Shepherd.

Now a major BBC feature film, starring Maggie Smith and Alex Jennings.