There is a fine depiction of writer’s work as unconscious autobiography in Alan Bennett’s Keeping On: memories willing themselves to be written out, persons wanting to have a voice. He recognizes the Northern Outsider First-Generation-With-Education in Stuart in The Habit of Art and Rudge in The History Boys:

But when writing the text, he didn’t see this. and wonders if it is himself or one of the actors in casting sessions not accepted. They slip through the back door to author’s mind and text. (I love the way he identifies these with Leonard Bast in Howard's End.).

When Bennett writes about Benjamin Britten’s real life (he is a character in The Habit of Art), he is critical of the composer’s way of “freezing out” people  - out of his life, and this may have happened to favourite choir boys when they grew up. Lost boys and lost boyhood and the fate of solitary working-class gifted ones is there in the back of his mind.

I write about this theme, as even I have wondered where on earth did that character turn up in my short stories. Once I wrote a story based on Jane Eyre, and at first, I tried to make an important minor character Vera, to honour Peter Capaldi’s work as transgender prostitute Vera in the TV show Prime Suspect 3. But she later emerged not as Vera, but as Grace Poole and Richard Mason together, a homeless transgender person taking care of the Mrs. Bertha Rochester character – and sending Outworldly Messages In the Ether (= post) to unite Jane and Edward.  Only later I saw connections to my own life history, and the person I was once close to – so there was unconscious autobiography there. Paavo Haavikko, a poet and playwright has said that in his plays all the roles speak with his voice.

The Habit of Art is available online ( a fee) here https://www.originaltheatre.com/portfolio-item/the-habit-of-art/- with the lovely David Yelland and Matthew Kelly as Britten and Auden, respectively.

The Madness of KIing George is online on the National Theatre Live from today 11th June until 18th June: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/nt-at-home-the-madness-of-george-iii  The impeccable, shrewd Mark Gatiss as the King (my beloved Mycroft from Sherlock, among other things).