- Home
- Fiction
- Contemporary Fiction
- Killing Time
Killing Time
A wonderful surprise gift from Alan Bennett – a brand new story, set in a home for the elderly; a glorious, darkly comic treat.
Join Faber Members for 10% off your first order.
We have a choir and on special occasions a glass of dry sherry. It’s less of a home and more of a club and very much a community.
Presided over by the lofty Mrs McBryde, Hill Topp House is a superior council home for the elderly. Among the unforgettable cast of staff and residents there’s Mr Peckover the deluded archaeologist, Phyllis the knitter, Mr Cresswell the ex-cruise ship hairdresser, the enterprising Mrs Foss and Mr Jimson the chiropodist. Covid is the cause of fatalities and the source of darkly comic confusion, but it’s also the key to liberation. As staff are hospitalised, protocol breaks down. Miss Rathbone reveals a lifelong secret, and the surviving residents seize their moment, arthritis allowing, to scamper freely in the warmth of the summer sun.
‘Violet? She’ll be having a little lie-down,’ said Mrs McBryde. ‘She likes to give her pacemaker a rest. I’ll rout her out.’
Alan Bennett has been one of our leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s. His television series Talking Heads has become a modern-day classic, as have many of his works for the stage including Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van (together with the screenplay), A Question of Attribution, The Madness of George III (together with the Oscar-nominated screenplay The Madness of King George), and…
Read MoreBrowse a selection of books we think you might also like, with genre matches and a few wildcards thrown in.
Download Faber’s abridged GCSE and A Level study guide for Alan Bennett’s The History Boys for free, and read extracts …
Can't decide what to give your friends and family this year? Our Christmas Gift Guide is here to help. We’ve …
Faber & Faber and Profile Books are delighted to announce the joint acquisition of Alan Bennett’s Keeping On Keeping On, …