Old Rage.
Sheila Hancock.
Bloomsbury. 2022. 306 pp.
ISBN 97815266 4745 0.
What if the Queen rejects me?
Prince Philip: It is all going a bit downmarket isn't it?
The Queen: Well, she is very good in Just a Minute.
Prince Phillip: But what about Wildcats of St Trinian's?
Sheila, however, is not an "also-ran" actor or just "an elderly woman, and a silly actress to boot," as she has sometimes described herself. However, she may well be considered eccentric. Not many women in their 80s, suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, would accept a job involving climbing a 750-meter, steep-sided mountain in Scotland, and being filmed doing it. This is what she did for the title role in the film, Edie. Having accepted the job, she went to the gym and trained hard for the climb, but even getting to the foot of the mountain was not easy:
It was a challenge. Stumbling over a bog full of horrific Scottish beasties, one minute falling flat on my face over a tussock, the next up to my knees in mud, is not what a nice English girl from Hammersmith is used to.
Not many women of her age, too, would be willing to publicly and frankly express their views and their rage about British politics, politicians, religion, class, the education system, Brexit, and other controversial topics ( all taboo in polite British conversation), as she does in this book.
Sheila, as she admits, has always been outspoken. After a taking part in a gala performance to celebrate the 80th birthday of Harold Pinter, she and he chatted about their past experiences when they were unknown actors (he was still David Baron) and had toured run-down theaters around England together in a repertory company, "doing a new play every week, rehearsing one during the day whilst performing another at night" and dreaming of "rosier" lives in the future:
Suddenly he said, "Are you still angry, Sheila?"
"More than ever," I said.
"Good girl." And he kissed my forehead.
He died a few months later.
Old age, as Sheila notes, is like that: you reach the age where your friends are "more likely to be buried than wed." After yet another funeral, John Geilgud, she reports, was reputed to have said, "It's hardly worth going home."
Old Rage is a book full of rage, and at times this is akin to ranting, but Sheila is still good company and can be very funny. She began this book as something she hoped would be "a gentle record of a fulfilled old age. An inspirational journey." But her own world and the world in general "descended into chaos." So, the four-and-a-half years of almost monthly journal entries here record not just her own serious health problems but the breast-cancer diagnosis of one of her daughters, the shock and dismay she felt over Brexit, and her experiences during the pandemic lockdowns, but also her memories of growing up in the post-war years, of gaining scholarships to grammar school and to The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, her early acting years when she worked with some of today's best-know actors and directors before they became successful, reflections on acting techniques and styles, retreats to her beloved small house in France, and her meditations on being a Quaker and the way that influences her life. Contemplating Quaker teachings after a Quaker Zoom meeting for worship, which entailed sitting in silence, slowing down, and relishing nature, she writes:
For an angry old woman like me, the Peace Testimony is especially difficult, but Advice 27—"Live adventurously"—guides my old age. I have tried Catholicism, Buddhism, Congregationalism, Atheism and Humanism, eventually finding a home in Quakerism for which, especially in these troubled times, I am truly grateful."
Then, on the next day:
Well, that didn't last long. So much for Quaker silence, The rage keeps returning.
Sometimes, too, the rage is valuable. Infuriated by watching Donald Trump on TV, she vents her "incandescent" fury on "a poor chap who made the mistake of climbing onto my balcony," trying to force his way into her house. Later she reflects that confronted by "this raging old dervish, leaping about shaking her fists" even Trump would have "backed-off and slunk away."
Some of her most moving memories are of life with her husband, fellow-actor, John Thaw, his own troubled past and his death from esophageal cancer. She also writes lovingly of her older sister Billie, whose career as a variety and cabaret artist living in Paris was memorably described by Sheila's daughter in a eulogy at Billie's funeral in Antibes:
My extraordinary, exotic, extravagant, energetic, eccentric, exasperating Auntie Billie...
Uncle Roy used to be on stilts, and she pretended to be his puppet, but now they both put their heads on top of small puppet bodies, and do the cancan in between the strip acts.
Sheila, too, had a brush with the alternative side of acting. She was offered a job as a Bluebell Girl—"these tall showgirls worked at the Lido in Paris"—but the principal at RADA heard about it and intervened. In an" out-of-work period," she also began training as a Bunny Girl at the Playboy Club, but "found the corseted leotard, fishnet tights and teetering heels agony." She was thrown out but kept the bunny ears and regrets having lost "the fluffy pom-pom tail that decorated our bums." She did, however, work for a while as a Hostess at The Pheasantry Club in Chelsea, where her "respectable working-class upbringing" inhibited her from providing the "extra services" which could have been lucrative for her. That's what students did to supplement the subsistence grants funding their acting studies.
Sheila, whose father described her as always rushing around "like a blue-arsed fly," was especially affected by the Covid-19 lockdowns. Repeatedly told she was "extremely vulnerable," constantly hearing the mantra "Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives," she found being confined to her home frightening and lonely. In the space of two months she had mastered the Internet—WhatsApp, Zoom, Face Time, YouTube—so that she could communicate with her daughters, her grandchildren, and her book club friends—but wandering about an empty house took its toll, at times she feared she was going mad, and she found herself scared of emerging when lockdown ended. Her journal entries record all this, but also her resilience and determination.
One advantage of an acting career, as she notes in an early journal entry, is there is "no retirement age" and she can continue to work for as long as she can remember her lines and "stumble across the stage without bumping into the scenery." So, in her last entries she is again working to "pay the bills" and "earn a crust," and she is also busily involved with the various organizations she supports. One of her after-Covid jobs was been to join fellow actor Gyles Brande in the Chanel 4 filming of two episodes about a couple traveling the canals in a narrowboat. It is another adventure, and an old spinal injury ensures Gyles "does all the crouchy things on the boat, groveling around on the floor, while I stand looking noble at the tiller."
In her final journal entry, in June 2021, she wonders what she has done with her "numerous years' worth of living" and concludes she and John had both achieved more than their working-class parents could ever have imagined. She hopes she may have "intentionally or inadvertently, passed on something that will contribute to the future."
She may be, as she notes in one entry, "a grumpy old woman"; she may at one time have felt inadequate and believed grammar-school educated people like her did not write books; but here she is with five published books to her name, still a very successful actress, and, now, a title. Well done, Dame Sheila Hancock!
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