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

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I know that I do, and it happens all over again three days later when I bump into her unexpectedly at the author of the year party at Hatchard’s in Piccadilly. 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. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and laughed out loud at her references to various politicians.

Whilst I’m sure she’s a very nice lady to be commended for her many and varied accomplishments including mountain climbing aged 83, raising 3 daughters whilst maintaining a career and a marriage to an alcoholic but the incessant opinionated ranting and disparaging remarks about public figures she doesn’t approve of or like is tiresome. Her proudest achievement is still the RSC tour she directed in the early 80s – Roger Allam played Mercutio to Daniel Day-Lewis’s Romeo – but she has no sense at all of a trajectory, nor even of much success. But here we have a much loved and in many ways under-appreciated actress, dealing with the privations and challenges of old age. I am a fan of Sheila’s work, and the work of her late husband John Thaw, and she’s always been a presence on British screens, so I was excited to read this.

Hancock is on the extremely vulnerable list, and is supposed still to be shielding, reducing her risk of contracting coronavirus as much as possible. Her analysis of the political environment in the UK as well as the rest of the world is thoughtful and passionate.

It’s 20 years now since Hancock’s second husband, John Thaw, died of oesophageal cancer – the same disease that took her first, the actor Alec Ross, 31 years earlier – and I wonder if the isolation born of Covid-19 painfully reinforced the state of widowhood.In 2019 she was starring with James Nesbitt in Tim Firth’s musical comedy This Is My Family in Chichester when she fell in the bathroom of her digs, and had to have 10 stitches in her head. I was probably scared, disappointed it was considered a flop; feeling I hadn’t done good service to it because I’d suffered terrible stage fright. From Brexit to politicians to Covid she seems to be saying the world (and Britain in particular ) is a horrible place and she can't wait to get out of it. Written during lockdown, “Old Rage” was born out of this extended time of isolation, giving Sheila time to reflect on her acting career, her family and her strongly-held beliefs; many of which might surprise or even offend some readers, but Sheila Hancock tells it like it is. Oh, I do agree – and the wonderful thing about getting older is that you can be a bit cantankerous and odd.