Alan Bennett leaves archive to Oxford

Alan Bennett, the playwright and memoirist, has left his entire literary and personal archive to his alma mater, Oxford University. And, unlike other writers, he has given it for free - out of affection for Oxford and in passionate defence of free state-funded education.

"I really feel that Oxford is where I was educated and where I belong, and that if Bodley [The Bodleian Library, Oxford] would like them, then they should have them," Bennett told the Guardian. "It sounds rather grand to say I can afford to, but libraries in England anyway are not well-endowed; they don't have much money. Me and my partner, we're relatively well off, and so I felt I didn't really want to take money for them."

Bennett said that he saw the gift as a debt repaid. "I was educated free right from the start. I was educated free in Leeds where I went to a state school, and then I got a scholarship to Exeter College Oxford, and so at no point did my parents or me have to pay anything for my education. Now that's a situation that students today can only dream of, really."

The treasure trove is made up of manuscripts, diaries, letters and, on his death, the Bodleian will receive all his remaining papers and his working library, including hundreds of inscribed first editions of his own and other books.

Library staff have already begun work on cataloguing Bennett's diaries, extracts from which became a bestseller, and various drafts of The Madness of George III, which became the Oscar-winning movie partly filmed in the Bodleian. They also have the script of The History Boys, which won awards as a stage play and film, and his first great stage success, Forty Years On. The title page reveals it could have been called Speak for England, Albert.