Old Rage: 'One of our best-loved actor's powerful riposte to a world driving her mad' - DAILY MAIL

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Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review. In December 2017 in the Diary entry Sheila’s Aunt Billie had been moved into a hospital and was apparently fading fast. Billie had fought hard to stay in her flat after her fall.

As Billie was in a ward of her own Sheila sat with Billie day and night singing to her and saying a childhood prayer to her, one that I truly loved, that was one my favourite parts in the book for loving the prayer.I am a fan of Sheila’s work, and the work of her late husband John Thaw, and she’s always been a presence on British screens, so I was excited to read this. She doesn’t shy away from telling her own opinions and that’s missing in todays world when everyone is so scared of saying the wrong thing. The journal starts in 2016 and carries through into 2022. In her introduction she writes that she hoped the book would be "a gentle record of a fulfilled old age. An inspirational journey. It hasn't turned out like that. As I wrote it, my own and the wider world descended into chaos."

The much-loved actor candidly shares the fear, joy and frustration she has found in her ninth decade' Guardian, Books of the Year 2022Home 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. Sheila has also been made a dame (a proper one), an accolade she took in her stride while reflecting on the type of society that created such things, which leads me to mention that her political views are expanded upon here. Let’s just say that Boris Johnson and some of his cronies, along with Trump, were not, and never will be, on her Christmas card list. Old Rage would probably make a better audiobook than a physical book. It is an outpouring…sometimes a rant, sometimes a reminisce, fuelled by emotions and memories..I could hear Sheila’s voice throughout and I would love to hear her actually reading this..