In this ingenious ‘double biography’, which covers not only her own life and that of her late husband, the peerless television actor John Thaw, but also their life together, the actress Sheila Hancock has achieved an impressive and affecting work of art. Unfort- unately, though, it is flawed by the author’s self-indulgence in ranting on about her tiresome Bel Littlejohnish political views by way of furnishing what her publishers (who really should have told her to chuck it) quaintly call ‘a study of Britain from the 1930s to the present’. It is as if a subtle and beautifully executed painting has been spoilt by being daubed with cheap political slogans.
Here are a few samples of Hancock’s excruciating ‘takes’ on modern history. After touching on the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’, she goes on to say, ‘The British also embarked on a programme of mass killing …’ The postwar Labour government was ‘led by visionaries, some … from the working class’. Yet, in the 1950s, we learn, ‘the British public got nervous, and despite the huge benefits they had received from the changes brought about by Labour, put the toffs back in charge again.’ In the 1960s, ‘cricket got rid of the snooty gentlemen players and the Great Train Robbers were admired for cocking a snook at authority … the Profumo scandal exposed the murky goings-on of the gentry. They were shown to be sleazy liars.’ As for the Cambridge spies, Hancock, a former member of the Young Communists’ League, notes that they ‘now proved to be traitors, or idealists according to your point of view’. In the 1970s, in England, we are told that not only the IRA but also, apparently, ‘the Loyalists’ were ‘bombing all and sundry’. America had landed itself ‘with the corrupt, foul-mouthed gangster Nixon as president’. That’s quite enough — but you’ll have to plough through a lot more of this sort of drivel (‘that idiot Bush’, etc.)

Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in