I love Sheila Hancock's view of the world. She comes across as acerbic, pointed, and not particularly interested in cutting fools any slack. She also is clearly a compassionate, loving woman who has lead a life. I'm not sure I go along with the idea that this is a book of overwhelming rage, as I have seen some reviews suggest. She just seems mightily pissed off with a lot of aspects of life, and being an ageing (but nowhere near her) woman myself, I have a lot of sympathy with the things that make you furious, although I don't think I'm quite at the stage of shouting at the TV yet, and there's no pigeons in this neighbourhood.
OLD RAGE is one of a series of memoirs that Hancock has released - the last one I read was her touching and moving THE TWO OF US, My Life with John Thaw.
It dawned on me, part way through this book, that her writing, and that of Billy Connolly (which I realise is an unexpected combination) have served as a guide book for my future for many years. THE TWO OF US was a light held up to the pain and survival of loss. OLD RAGE is a guide to what will happen as you age, and how you can approach it without sadness, pity or regret. Her religious beliefs, work and family as far from mine as you can imagine, yet there's much in what she says, how she approaches the various blows that age, failing health, unexpected setbacks, annoyances, inconveniences and sheer irritation that comes with getting old that's universal, helpful and frequently funny. Mind you, reading this I could see and hear her battling to control a canal longboat and deal with Giles Brandreth, a series of TV shows that I've found compulsive viewing.
But I'm increasingly grateful for the grumpy, real old woman books that are starting to pop up. I love the idea of her thrifty ways, her no nonsense attitude and her inability to stomach fools. The problem with this world now is that we have old women who are too quiet, and fools who are too bloody loud.
Old Rage
Sheila Hancock looked like she was managing old age. She had weathered and even thrived in widowhood, taking on acting roles that would have been demanding for a woman half her age. She had energy, friends, a devoted family, a lovely home. She could still remember her lines.
So why, at 89, having sailed past supposedly disturbing milestones – 50, 70 even 80 – without a qualm, did she suddenly feel so furious? Shocking diagnoses, Brexit and bereavement seemed to knock her from every quarter. And that was before lockdown.
Home alone, classified as 'extremely vulnerable', she finds herself yelling at the TV and talking to the pigeons. But she can at least take a good long look at life – her work and family, her beliefs (many of them the legacy of her wartime childhood) and, uncomfortable as it might be to face, her future.
In Old Rage, one of Britain's best loved actors opens up about her ninth decade. Funny, feisty, honest, she makes for brilliant company as she talks about her life as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a widow, an actor, a friend and looks at a world so different from the wartime world of her childhood. And yet – despite age, despite rage – she finds there are always reasons for joy.
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