When John Thaw, star of The Sweeney and Inspector Morse, died from cancer in 2002, a nation lost one of its finest actors, and Sheila Hancock lost a beloved husband. In this unique double biography she chronicles their lives, personal and professional, together and apart, growing up and growing older.
John Thaw was born in Manchester, the son of a lorry driver. When he arrived at RADA on a scholarship he felt an outsider. In fact his timing was perfect: it was the sixties and television was beginning to make its mark. With his roles in Z-Cars and The Sweeney, fame came quickly. But it was John's role as Morse that made him an icon. In 1974 he married Sheila Hancock, with whom he shared a working-class background and a RADA education. Sheila was already the star of the TV series The Rag Trade and went on to become the first woman artistic director at the RSC.
Theirs was a sometimes turbulent, always passionate relationship, and in this remarkable book Sheila describes their love, weathering overwork and the pressures of celebrity, drink, and cancer, with honesty and piercing intelligence, and evokes two lives lived to the utmost.
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"I loved this book. Sheila Hancock is a very strong woman and great actress and it soon becomes apparent she is more than capable of writing too. Her description of love for her partner, actor John Thaw is deeply moving and his sad loss from cancer is a very raw and tragic piece of writing.
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Angie (4 out of 5 stars)