INSIDE THE HABIT OF ART

This 10-minute documentary prelude to Alan Bennett’s new play, directed by Adam Low, will be shown before the NTLIVE screening of The Habit of Art.

Produced in association with the National Theatre, Arts Council England and More 4. A full-length version of the film will be shown on More 4 this autumn.

Alan Bennett’s play ‘The Habit of Art’ is built around an imagined encounter between the poet W.H.Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten in Oxford in 1972. In fact the two men hardly spoke after their collaboration ended in the 1940s, and Auden said that Britten was the only friend he had ever lost. The film looks at the extraordinary relationship between England’s finest poet and one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century, which produced the legendary documentary ‘Night Mail’ and Britten’s first opera ‘Paul Bunyan’, in New York in 1942, the failure of which caused the rift between these great artists that lasted for the rest of their lives.