Michael Brooke wrote:
Alan Bennett’s debut play for television shows a day in the life of the members of a Halifax cycling club in 1911, following them from the town to the ruins of Fountains Abbey and eavesdropping on their conversations, which range from the inconsequential, to the reflective, to the ruefully ironic.
The most telling example of the latter comes when Boothroyd explains why there will never be another war, as the play is set three years before World War I cut swathes through a generation – and, as the 1919 coda implies, many of the club’s members as well.Read More »