Book Review: 'The Two of Us' by Sheila Hancock

This week I've read The Two of Us. Sheila Hancock's memoir of her life with John Thaw. It was first published 15 years ago, but my love of the Inspector Morse franchise hadn't consumed me in 2004. I liked the show, just as I had liked The Sweeney when I was a teenager, but it was still just unusually intelligent tv. Television was an intellectual bete-noire for me in those days. I hated the way it was always chattering away in the background at home, forcing what I considered a mentally deadening consensual reality on its audience.

Besides,  there really was no Inspector Morse franchise in 2004. The Morse spin-off Lewis wouldn't begin for another two years, and I didn't even see that until 2010, having jettisoned my tv between house moves at some point along the line. Finally I did see it, and I thought it was wonderful, almost as good as the original (I was too loyal to allow for anything else). By the time the Morse prequel Endeavour began in 2012 I was deeply immersed in the Morse universe. Those of us who are make Star Wars fans look casual and disinterested.

The Two of Us, however, isn't about Endeavour Morse. It's not about Jack Regan either. It's about the complex, troubled man who created them both, and his twenty-eight years with Sheila Hancock, someone who all British people of a certain age will recognize even if they can't name very many things that she starred in. I remember her from her brilliant appearances on the radio show Just a Minute. More recently I have seen her in the inspirational little indie film Edie. She was in EastEnders, she writes, playing the mother of Martin Kemp, but I didn't have a tv at the time. She also appeared on tv in a number of sit-coms in the 60s and early 70s, always typecast as scatter-brained and -- from a couple of clips I've seen -- sexually flirtatious (if naively so). Her greatest work, apparently, was in the theatre.

Her book, written beautifully, looks back to their separate childhoods and the development of their careers to the point at which they met. Then we read about their lives together. Throughout, she shares extracts from her private diary, written when Thaw became ill at the start of the new century. In passages of great beauty and honest she records his slow decline and death, and the grief that paralysed her in the weeks and months that followed it. But Hancock clearly isn't the sort of woman to plead for your sympathy, or to wallow in self-pity. Slowly, painfully, with the help of friends and family, she starts to get better. Those passages, after the terrible sadness of the ones that preceded them, are joyous to read.

You probably won't want to bother with The Two of Us if you're not an admirer of either of the main players in it, and if you are, you've probably read it already. If you haven't, though, try it. And if you're a celebrity, about to hire a ghost writer to do your autobiography for you, have a look at this book first. Ghost writers rarely do a subject justice. The prose, even if it's your own speech taken from tapes and reordered, invariably comes across as flat and boring. This whole project, on the other hand, works extraordinarily well.

Guest Writer: Ed Markowski

Homage To Thompson

On January 20, 2017 at 12:00 pm the citizens of the world bid farewell to the Obama Nation and bore witness to the dawn of America's Abomination. In New York Harbor the inscription was amended to read . . . Give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breath fear when we arrived a one-hundred and ten story hotel and casino constructed entirely of Mount Rushmore granite had erased the faces by law dictionaries phone books news papers, magazines short stories bibles encyclopedias letters coupons and conversations could no longer exceed two-hundred and eighty characters regardless of faith race denomination and purpose kneeling on Sundays became a federal crime on July 16, 2018 in honor of the president millions of men women boys and girls had their hair dyed pale orange from Moscow to Minsk his last assault on Obama's legacy was the release of a previously classified National Inquirer that proved Hillary Clinton was the mastermind responsible for the terrorist attacks on 9 / 11 / 01 on the day the documents were released Osama Bin Laden was granted a full presidential pardon by executive order Betsy DeVos was finally credited in American History books as the creator of our star mangled banner two-hundred and forty-two years after the fact all of the surviving American service men who had been taken prisoner while serving in Vietnam were convicted of impersonating war heroes and deported to Hanoi on the promise of bringing good jobs back to America his electoral college victory immediately and exponentially expanded the language employment opportunities and self esteem of dunk tank clowns at every county fair in America from Tiny Tim's preschool to Harvard white boards now stand where black boards once stood in a joint statement from the White House Rose Garden the president flanked by Franklin Graham Jerry Falwell Junior Mark Burns and Pat Robertson declared all ten commandments antiquated and obsolete on July 27 2019 the Trump International Hotel added a new restaurant Little Rocket Man's Nuclear Bar B Que the restaurant's fare is described as ravenously scant radioactive and torturously spicy the enemies of the American people were armed with ink pens typewriters pencils erasers white out notebooks paper clips sandals hope habanero peppers snow shoes Labatts Blue and the Stanley Cup from sea to shining sea the sunshine sheen coating every seal's coat was pure crude from California's Coalinga Oil Fields regardless of grain every box of organic non gmo cereal by executive order will now be labeled and sold as Corn Fakes with one exception the food feds declared every burger on the McDonald's menu a super food being that exception the Big Mac was rewarded with the title of super super food in historical museums nation wide the truth was framed and hung as children were being confiscated kidnapped and caged on the southern border the name of that time honored tradition that teaches the rewards of an honest days work and the stewardship of their wages was changed from Allowance to Hush Money after he renamed Glad Bags Vlad Bags on Thanksgiving Day 2018 during a ceremony at Plymouth Rock he told the indigenous people of the Americas they'd better damn well thank the Pilgrims for teaching them how to grow corn after his presidential commission on the state of the family found that ninety-eight percent of confiscated children including infants and toddlers thrive and are much happier living in cyclone cages without their parents he signed an executive order that changed the name of the holiday to Martin Luther Day on the following Monday his sixteen character memoir Profiles In Sewage filled America's adult book stores when the nations prison term ended in addition to the real estate holdings hotels and squeaky clean billions the ex president owned and controlled the largest flock of fanged sheep on Earth his legacy was framed by this question George Washington was America's first President, who was America's first Dicktweeter ? and through the years following his freezing reign historians political scientists and the gilded minds of Washington's think tanks used one word to describe his presidency COVFEFE . . .

                                     another stranger
                                            coming into focus . . .
                                                      family reunion



                            
Written At The House
On Hadley Road
10/3/2018 - 10/14/2018                                   
                       

Tibet National Uprising Day

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising. The Parliament-in-Exile makes an official statement about the history and the current status of Tibet under occupation here.

References to the anniversary on British media, however, appear to be non-existent at the moment. Interest in the matter on the part of our political parties is equally hard to detect.

I had Sky News' Sunrise programme on in the background for an hour this morning and it didn't get a mention. I had Sophy Ridge on Sunday on for at least half an hour; most of that was taken up by an interview with Dominic Raab, in which he talked about Brexit, the 'Marxist' agenda of Labour under Corbyn and the 'good story' that the Conservative Party has to tell the electorate. He also coyly denied (looking all the time like an arrogant young murder suspect on Inspector Morse) that he had any immediate ambition to become prime minister.

I have The Andrew Marr Show on now. A newspaper review didn't talk about Tibet. Tory David Davis is being interviewed now and he has spoken only about Brexit. John McDonnell of the Labour Party is on shortly; he won't talk about Tibet either. He never has, as far as I know. (Since I wrote the first draft of this I watched his interview. Unless I missed something Andrew Marr questioned him only on Brexit and Labour's alleged problem with anti-Semitism.)

Brexit is a pressing news item, obviously. So is knife crime. So are many other issues around the world. But when the streets explode with violence in Venezuela the media gives it wall-to-wall coverage and the Right calls for intervention; supporters on the Left object. When the Palestinians clash with the Israelis the media only covers it if the violence is sufficiently large; and the Left expresses enthusiastic and unconditional support for the Palestinians.

60 years ago vast numbers of Tibetans were brutally murdered by the occupying Chinese. The anniversary reminds us that the torture and the killings continue on a daily basis in what human rights organizations consider the second most dangerous, least democratic place to live in the world.

But who, in the West, is reporting it? Who in the West with any power is committing themselves to doing anything about it?