"Guaranteed to please absolutely everyone" Daily Telegraph
In 1974 the playwright Alan Bennett took pity on the elderly, eccentric and evil-smelling Miss Shepherd, whose only home was a dilapidated van that the authorities were trying to move on from its illegal parking place in the road outside his London home. He offered her a temporary parking space in his front garden, a refuge she occupied for the next 15 years until her death. This is the dramatised but largely accurate account of the weird relationships that subsequently developed between them, her social worker and the neighbours. In the play, there are actually two Alan Bennetts: one who talks directly to Miss Shepherd and everyone else on stage, and another who comments on the events to the audience and has arguments with his other self about what really happened and what his motives were.
Richly comic, brutally honest and at times oddly moving, this West End hit eventually became an equally successful film, starring Dame Maggie Smith as the idiosyncratic Miss Shepherd.
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