Killing Time
A Sunday Times Bestselling 'pitch-perfect' (Observer) treat for winter.
Published on 11. September 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
112 pages
978-0-571-39482-1 (ISBN)
Description
*** Pre-order ENOUGH SAID, Alan Bennett's fourth collection of diaries and prose, now! Publishing March 2026 ***
Killing Time is a gift of a short story from Alan Bennett - a glorious, darkly comic treat.
'A mini-masterpiece.' THE TIMES
'Full of wit and style.' OBSERVER
'A terrific cast of characters, and secrets and chaos aplenty.' iNEWS
'A geriatric Lord of the Flies.' SPECTATOR
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.
Hill Topp House is a superior council home for the elderly. Among the unforgettable residents are Mr Cresswell the ex-cruise ship hairdresser, Mr Peckover the deluded archaeologist, and the enterprising Mrs Foss. 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 and the surviving residents seize their moment, to scamper freely, arthritis allowing, 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.'
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER.
Killing Time was a Sunday Times bestseller w/e 09/11/2024 to w/e 28/12/2024.
Killing Time is a gift of a short story from Alan Bennett - a glorious, darkly comic treat.
'A mini-masterpiece.' THE TIMES
'Full of wit and style.' OBSERVER
'A terrific cast of characters, and secrets and chaos aplenty.' iNEWS
'A geriatric Lord of the Flies.' SPECTATOR
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.
Hill Topp House is a superior council home for the elderly. Among the unforgettable residents are Mr Cresswell the ex-cruise ship hairdresser, Mr Peckover the deluded archaeologist, and the enterprising Mrs Foss. 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 and the surviving residents seize their moment, to scamper freely, arthritis allowing, 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.'
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER.
Killing Time was a Sunday Times bestseller w/e 09/11/2024 to w/e 28/12/2024.
Reviews / Votes
Is Killing Time a parable? A satirical Lord of the Flies for tart-tongued OAPs? A joyously juicy series of character studies in a care home in which pretty much every line comes with some sharp observation? Yep, all of the above . . . This is the embroidering of a master, a writer who can make intricacy feel easy. - THE TIMESSo accustomed are we now to Bennett's prose that it takes a mental leap to notice just how good he is, how finely tuned his sentences, the microscopic power of his observation. - iNEWS
Alan Bennett is back with deadpan gallows humour . . . it becomes obvious that Bennett, with his gentle narrative voice, has lulled us into a story that takes the scandalous tragedy of care home deaths from Covid-19 as its true subject. - FINANCIAL TIMES
Bennett is in his element in such an establishment [as Hill Topp House], attuned to both the grim apprehensions of old age and its awful comedy, and shifts deftly between the two. It is familiar territory, but nobody does it like him . . . his sentences remain as devastatingly, casually precise as ever . . . The story's conclusion manages quietly, wryly, and without the least trace of sentimentality, to touch the heart. - GUARDIAN
Full of wit and style. Alan Bennett employs his pitch-perfect repertoire of satirical skills in his first book for five years . . . a wry little rejoinder to Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club. - OBSERVER
It's at the bottom of Killing Time's first page when anyone ignorant of whom they were reading might suspect Alan Bennett. 'He's dead, Mr Ellis. Mr Firbank was always the main man. Was it him you were wanting?' Any other writer would put, I think: 'Mr Ellis is dead. Mr Firbank was always in charge. Was it him you wanted to speak to?' The differences are small, but in them lies the key to Bennett's mastery, his ear for the tiny idiosyncrasies of language and all that they reveal. - SPECTATOR
More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 165 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
119 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-571-39482-1 (9780571394821)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
ALAN BENNETT's works for stage and screen include Talking Heads, Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Question of Attribution, The Madness of George III, an adaptation of The Wind in the Willows, The History Boys, The Habit of Art, People, Hymn, Cocktail Sticks, Two Besides and Allelujah! His collections of prose are Writing Home, Untold Stories (PEN/Ackerley Prize, 2006), Keeping On Keeping On and House Arrest. His fiction includes The Uncommon Reader and Smut: Two Unseemly Stories.