Alan Bennett
discusses his battle with cancer

Gay playwright Alan Bennett (The Madness of George III) reveals in his upcoming biography that he had surgery and treatment for colon cancer in 1997. BBC News reports that Bennett writes in his upcoming memoir Telling Stories that surgeons removed a "rock-bun"-sized tumor and that he kept it a secret because he did not "want to die in the pages of a newspaper." He went on to note, "I did not see cancer as a way of dramatizing my life. Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore."