Product Description

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. 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6574 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-06
• Released on: 2005-06-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'A book of exceptional emotional candour' Sunday Telegraph 'Wise, witty and at times unbearably moving' Glasgow Herald 'Startlingly good Hancock is remarkably good at evoking period and place' Sunday Times 'Her honest, graceful account leaves nothing out - Thaw's alcoholism, his depression, their separation, their love' Dublin Sunday Independent

Glasgow Herald
‘Wise, witty and at times unbearably moving’

Hugh Massingberd, Spectator
‘An impressive and affecting work of art’

Customer Reviews

Life enhancing
A simply wonderful book ,reduced me to tears repeatedly.Clever format ,but not so clever that it leaves you lost.A great and glorious tribute to John Thaw and a total credit to Sheila Hancock.
I remember her in the Rag Trade when I was tiny ,had no idea of the depth and seriousness of her theatre background.
Read this book!
but keep hankies nearby.

brillant
wonderfull, there are no words to discribe how this book touched me. Reducing me to tears more than once. this book taught me about john thaw and broke my heart at the same time. the pain shown through shelia made me fear ever to lose someone. my book is ruined with tears stains but i came out with an understanding of life after death. Would recomend to everyone.

A story of love above all else
Although not published until October last year, this apparently quickly became the best-selling biography of 2004. I got mine in my Christmas stocking, and if there should be anyone out there who wasn't so lucky, or who has not already bought it for themselves, I can recommend it wholeheartedly, but it's probably wise to keep the box of tissues handy; (though this is not to say that it is an overwrought or sentimental account of the lives of two of Britain's best-loved actors - far from it).

There are two tiers of narrative throughout the book. There is the straightforward chronological history of the childhood and development of Sheila Hancock and John Thaw, told in separate chapters up until their paths meet and, after the loss of Sheila's first husband and the break-up of John's first marriage, their wedding. Thereafter the story tends to concentrate on John's life - while it by no means neglects the successful part of his career, making Regan and Morse in particular characters that will never be forgotten, it does relate in candid detail his struggle to come to terms with being a celebrity, his difficulty in communicating in person with even his closest family, his moods and ultimately his drinking. We are spared the gory details but the relatively unemotional recounting of the events, and his eventual overcoming of them, juxtaposed with the occasional cards or letters he would write expressing his love, do make it gripping to read. Sheila's own career and personal difficulties (she had her own cancer scare) are covered but briefly at this time.

As if that weren't enough, the whole narrative is peppered with extracts from Sheila's diary, acting as a second tier to the story, starting from January 2001, three months before any inkling of John's illness, through his swift decline and then death in February 2002, and her struggle to come to terms with her loss. Again, we are spared the gory details but the process is no less harrowing for this; shining through it all is the undying love they had for each other, having survived the trials and tribulations of what had gone before. You do have to be disciplined and not just skip forward reading these diary notes alone - for example John's death is recorded at just about the point where they marry in the main narrative, - and you will miss a lot of relevant history if you do.

It's a story of life and love, of tears and happiness, of struggles and success, and almost none of the name-dropping that features in most auto/biographies. It is both sad and heart-warming, and that, coming from one relatively cold-hearted male, is acclaim indeed.