London : Faber and Faber : Profile Books, 2009.

'Talking Heads' was first broadcast in 1988 and 1998

The comic essayist on crying over Olive Kitteridge, his love for Richard Yates and the books that make him laugh

The book I am currently reading
Hidden Valley Road. It’s a nonfiction book about a family with 12 children, half of whom turn out to be schizophrenic. In the opening pages the mother sews a live bird’s eyes shut. And she’s one of the few who isn’t mentally ill!

The book that changed my life
Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. A friend read it out aloud to me when we were hitchhiking across America in 1976, and it made me think: “That’s right – books!” After high school I had forgotten about them. As soon as I got a stable address, I secured a library card, and started making up for lost time.

As new actors revive the Talking Heads TV monologues, the poignant tales they tell will resonate more than ever with viewers in lockdown

The decision, announced last week by BBC Drama, to revive and recast Alan Bennett’s landmark Talking Heads series was driven as much by necessity as sentiment. Monologue, delivered to camera, is just about the only form of acting possible at the moment. But, still, there will be a special poignancy in hearing how the mini-dramas sound a generation later in their new voices – Imelda Staunton instead of Patricia Routledge, Kristen Scott Thomas in place of Eileen Atkins, Tamsin Greig for Penelope Wilton, Jodie Comer instead of Julie Walters.

Bennett wrote the first of the monologues in 1987, giving voice, in his 50s, to lives that in several cases were facing their last act. He himself turns 86 next week, about the same age as Thora Hird was when he cast her so memorably in Waiting for the Telegram in the last of the second series of monologues in 1998.

Related: Jodie Comer to star in new BBC production of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads

CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: Net curtains. They're respectable enough when they hang straight, especially when made from lace, not nylon.

The BBC are remaking Alan Bennett's monologue masterpieces, Talking Heads, recruiting the likes of Jodie Comer and Imelda Staunton.