'20 August. It's one of my life's regrets that I have never kept a donkey.'

Alan Bennett's 1983 diary was the first that he published in the London Review of Books, though by then he'd already been keeping one for about ten years. 'Besides the occasional incident that seems worth recording,' he wrote, 'I put down gossip and notes on work and reading.' This modest model has remained intact right up to the present, as Bennett has ascended to ever higher planes of national admiration and affection, and his much-loved LRB diary entries - which have come to be seen as a sort of alternative Queen's Speech - approach their ruby jubilee.

This beautifully produced week-to-view diary for 2023, illustrated by Jon McNaught and equipped with a clutch of useful features, contains a celebratory selection of some of his most immortal anecdotes and observations: one entry for each week of the year, and a new introduction by Bennett, reflecting on a life well-recorded.