For Bennett, it’s payback time

Playwright-screenwriter Alan Bennett is donating his literary archive to Oxford University’s Bodleian Library.

The gift includes drafts and manuscripts of plays such as “The Lady in the Van” and “The History Boys” as well as letters and more than 30 years of unpublished diaries.

Bennett studied history at Oxford before founding the comic troupe Beyond the Fringe with Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. He has written for film, television and the stage.

Bennett, 74, said he considered the donation “an obligation repaid.” When he was a student at Oxford, university education in Britain was free. Undergraduates now pay up to $4,800 a year in tuition, plus other costs.

“I say with some pride that I had a state education: school, university. None of it cost my parents a penny,” Bennett said. “It’s a situation which young people in education today can only dream of, and this is wrong.”