Old Rage: 'One of our best-loved actor's powerful riposte to a world driving her mad’ - DAILY MAIL

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She remembers the war, she has direct memory of how people behaved and cause that we, as a human condition, caused one another and how long it took to rebuild bridges.

At first I was a little unsettled by the format - it is loose and fluid like a conversation which switches backwards and forwards between dates and ideas. For actors, however, retirement is rarely on the cards: most want (and need) to keep working, and Hancock is no exception. Absolutely brilliant book and certainly reflects many of the feelings I and my friends felt (and are still feeling) during Covid and even now. I spent all my time with a tooth prop in my mouth, a device that was supposed to help with your vowels.I find it interesting to see Hancock's point of view on a great many recent events from a perspective somewhere less Americentric. In my opinion, I did feel there was too much ranting about politics and Brexit for my taste, but it’s clearly a passionate topic for her. She covers everything in old age from the loneliness and aches and pains to rage at the body that once did so much but now can’t, and the strange society that we’re all making our way through. Don’t be daft, I tell her, when she claims not to know why she has been invited – at which point, clasping my hand, she gets on with asking me questions (tonight’s subject: social media trolls). Hancock is brilliant company as she looks back on her life as a daughter, mother, widow and still an excellent performer, while railing against much of the modern world.

I had assumed (and wondered if I was seeing it in myself) that as we get older we get less wound up by things. It was so honest and to the point -Sheila just says things as they are and is not afraid to be opiniated and to share those views -and this was so refreshing and I really resonated with this! In Old Rage, she asserts that The Wildcats of St Trinian’s, in which she starred in 1980, is one of the worst films ever made, and that appearances as Senna Pod in Carry on Cleo and as a version of Margaret Thatcher in a “weird” episode of Doctor Who will “not get me listed on anyone’s roster of great performances”. What I loved most of all though was the sense of a long life, the witness to events - a world war, and to stars of the stage from long ago…Kenneth More, Kenneth Williams, James Mason. Let’s just say that Boris Johnson and some of his cronies, along with Trump, were not, and never will be, on her Christmas card list.

It all kicks off with an insight into her recent film “Edie”, where an old lady, her husband having passed away recently, decided to go and climb Suilven. There are eight grandchildren, all of whom, at various points during the lockdown, stood on Hancock’s patio and merrily “shouted” at her. View image in fullscreen Hancock with daughters (l-r) Melanie, Joanna and Abigail at the memorial service for John Thaw at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, 2002. Big Thank you so much to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for a digital copy of this book this book was a real treat and I loved it. Sheila Hancock definitely isn't letting things pass her by if they frustrate her or, as a country, we haven't learnt from previous experiences.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Following the death of her husband, John Thaw, she wrote a memoir of their marriage, The Two of Us, which was a number one bestseller and won the British Book Award for Author of the Year. She is brave although fearful and sometimes tearful but still interested in people, hugely engaged with the world and keen to promote change. It summed up a stage we were at: him being very sexy in leather, us spending money we’d never had before, and me driving him mad with my guidebooks. However, her enquiring mind never ceases to scrutinise the after-effects of Covid-19 and Brexit while politics tops the list with shoddy government, weak politicians, inept prime ministers, poor decision making, and lack of support for the education system.Hancock as Mrs Lovett, with Denis Quilley as the demon barber, in Sweeney Todd at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, 1980. Sheila Hancock is one of Britain's most highly regarded and popular actors, and received an OBE for services to drama in 1974 and a CBE in 2011. Suilven and spoke my heart “I did not feel diminished, a tiny human in the vast world, I felt part of it.

There was much to admire about the diary style reflections of Sheila in her 80s eg rants about Brexit and the impact of Covid. Today is particularly piercing on this score, the death of Denis Waterman, Thaw’s co-star in The Sweeney, having just been announced. Sheila has also been made a dame (a proper one), an accolade she took in her stride while reflecting on the type of society that created such things, which leads me to mention that her political views are expanded upon here. At her age she has seen much and it gives her deep insight into the people who claim to know how things should be and trying to wield power over us.I confess I’ve not read any of her three previous efforts but, after digesting this diarised account of her latter years, I can certainly handle a bigger dose of Sheila. But here we have a much loved and in many ways under-appreciated actress, dealing with the privations and challenges of old age. Following the death of her husband, John Thaw, she wrote a memoir of their marriage, The Two of Us, which was a no.