Eileen Atkins belongs to a singular generation of British actresses, among them Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Sian Phillips and Vanessa Redgrave, who not only continue to perform on stage and screen in their late eighties but all of whom, apart from Smith, have written their memoirs.
Atkins already has a proven literary track record. Having wisely abandoned her first effort, a three-act, 17-minute play, containing ‘murder, incest and sodomy’, written during an early period of unemployment, she went on to co-create the hugely successful TV series Upstairs, Downstairs and The House of Eliott, write the play Vita and Virginia and put together a selection of Ellen Terry’s lectures.
Will She Do? displays the emotional intelligence, acute observation, wry humour and above all honesty that distinguish Atkins’s acting. She endorses the verdict of her friend and collaborator Jean Marsh, that her brain is ‘like Gruyère cheese — full of holes’; but if her memories are selective, they are also vivid and unsentimental.
The book covers the first 30 years of Atkins’s life, from her birth in a Salvation Army nursing home in 1934 to her performance as Childie in Frank Marcus’s The Killing of Sister George in 1964, which made her a bone fide West End star.
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