AlanBennett

After gaining a first class history degree at Oxford, Bennett was well set for a career in academia. But while at university he'd become a stand-out performer on the Oxford cabaret scene and when Edinburgh Festival director Robert Ponsonby came looking for the greatest Oxbridge comedy talents for a new show, Bennett was recruited, on the suggestion of fellow student Dudley Moore.

The resulting production was Beyond the Fringe, written and performed by Bennett and Moore alongside Cambridge starlet Peter Cook and Footlight-turned-doctor Jonathan Miller.

Its dazzling, unprecedented success saw Bennett and his colleagues become the toast of the comedy world. After taking the show to London and Broadway, Bennett contributed sketches to TV shows including BBC-3 before stretching his wings with his own varied six-part series On the Margin. The show was highly regarded but is now lost, falling victim to the BBC's policy of wiping tapes.

After On the Margin, Bennett changed direction, venturing into a new career as a playwright.

In 1968 his first play, the school-based Forty Years On, starred John Gielgud alongside Bennett himself and received strong reviews, forming the springboard for a string of highly acclaimed plays both for the stage and television.

He later mastered the monologue form with Talking Heads (1987), telling the funny yet bittersweet stories of six repressed characters, all down on their luck. So revered have they become that not only did Bennett produce a second set of monologues in 1998 but they've become a staple on school syllabuses as an acknowledged modern literary classic.

Bennett's plays have also been making the transition from stage to screen, with his adaptations of The Madness of King George and The History Boys being among the most critically lauded British films of recent times.