the times | Saturday June 11 2022 saturday review 13
threat from a housing development.
“These newcomers won’t understand our
way of life,” wails Hancock, the supporter
of free movement. “Why can’t things stay
the same?” Revolutionary fervour has its
limits, please. She attacks private educa-
tion yet admits, with lengthy anguish, that
she sent her daughter to St Paul’s.
The book is at its best when Hancock
sticks to her experiences. She writes well
about the shock of learning that her adult
daughter has cancer. Memories of acting
in regional rep with Pinter in the 1950s,
when he used the stage name David Baron,
are also readable. Hancock knew his first
wife, Vivien Merchant, “an actress of
sphinx-like subtlety”. Merchant and Pinter
split in the early 1960s and by the time
Hancock re-encountered her in 1978,
Merchant was a “bloated, dishevelled
drunk who reeled into my dressing room
ranting incoherently about Harold”.
Diaries are worth reading when their
author has witnessed such things. When
she has simply stayed in her London flat
through Covid lockdown, working herself
into a vortex of clichés about Brexit and
only going outside to embrace the occa-
sional oak tree, “thanking it for being”,
they become a chore.
Hancock admits that Brexit left her
“bordering on the unhinged”. When she
starts going on about the valiant working
classes of old, with their “vivid lifestyles”,
their “darts, billiards, dominoes or whist
drives”, their “clog-dancing” and “Wakes
weeks and May Day beauty queens and
Butlin’s holiday camps and hop-picking”, it
is hard to disagree that she is drifting a bit
from her door jamb. Crosspatch national
treasure? No. A patronising luvvie.what fun he and other pilots had bombing
an Ethiopian village until it was surround-
ed by fire, killing, he estimated, five thou-
sand “wretches”.
It ended, of course, with Mussolini and
several others hanging upside down from
a garage gantry on a square in Milan. But
on the way Foot has provided us with new
villains and heroes. For me, one of the
most odious figures is the king. There was
no democratic or constitutional basis for
fascist rule. It was a straightforward coup
d’état. But the king, by refusing to declare
martial law and installing Mussolini as
prime minister, made it happen.
As for heroes, my laurels fall on the head
of the man who made the sole interruption
of Mussolini’s first and threatening speech
to the Italian parliament in 1922. It was Gi-
useppe Emanuele Modigliani, a radical
and brother to the famous artist, “known”
Foot writes, “as a commanding orator:
sharp, fearless, clever and well prepared”,
who shouted: “Long Live Parliament.”
Between 1920 and his forced exile in
1928 Modigliani — a Jew — was beaten up
several times, kidnapped and tortured,
and threatened with assassination. Forced
to leave Italy, he went to Vienna and then
Paris. In 1943 he and his wife escaped the
arrests (and murders) of exiled Italian
anti-fascists in Vichy France by illegally
crossing the Swiss border — a flight put at
risk by Modigliani’s refusal to shave off his
trademark beard. In October 1944 he flew
into liberated Naples. As he sat by the
roadside a woman, recognising him, came
up and knelt in front of him. I would too.
Despite the
Captain
Corelli
mythology,
Italian
soldiery in
the fascist
era was not
gentler than
its German
allies
GETTY IMAGESGive it a rest, Dame Humblebrag
O
ne rainy night in 2008 Harold
Pinter attended a theatrical
gala. Afterwards, the play-
wright was escorted to a car by
his friend Sheila Hancock,
three years his junior. Pinter being termi-
nally ill and Hancock the worse for drink,
they were teetering a little. As raindrops
plopped on Hancock’s umbrella, Pinter
turned and asked her: “Are you still angry,
Sheila?” “More than ever,” Hancock
replied. “Good girl,” Pinter said and kissed
her on the forehead before being whisked
away to his eventual appointment with the
Grim Reaper.
The story, recounted in Hancock’s latest
autobiographical book, Old Rage, tells us
something about Pinter’s old-world banter
(“good girl”) and Hancock’s long desire to
be thought splenetic. Sheila the political
firebrand! Sheila the speaker of truth to
power! There is career mileage in being a
crotchet, perhaps. Yet professionally the
actress has not always adhered to this type.
Her best-known film role is Senna Pod
in that 1964 classic of cinematic angst, er,
Carry on Cleo. She is a regular on Radio 4’s
Just a Minute, serving as a sort of female
Derek Nimmo. She has played Granny
Weatherwax, Mrs Malaprop and a St Trin-
ian’s headmistress. Her most recent televi-
sion work consisted of pootling along a
canal with Gyles Brandreth. Hancock may
long have yearned to be considered a vitu-
perative “character” full of brave opinions
and for her “work” to achieve egalitarian
change, but it is not a convincing act.
In this sporadic diary, which starts in
2016, she tries to whip up crossness about
Brexit, the class system, Nigel Farage, her
rheumatoid arthritis, Eton, Margaret
Thatcher, American nuclear weapons,
Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and, less
predictably, Diane Abbott. She bumped
into the former shadow home secretary
during a TV studio discussion on euthana-
sia (Hancock is pro, Abbott agin). “She
could barely bother to engage with me,
making clear a silly actor did not under-
stand these things,” Hancock complains.
Don’t take it personally, Dame Sheila,
Diane’s like that with everyone.
Hancock, 89, presents herself as a
visionary pioneer for gay rights, state
education and environmentalism. She is a
thirster after knowledge. She puts people
right. She is a moralist. At earlier stages she
tried her hand at other religious fashions,
plus atheism, but at present she’s a tren-
chant Quaker. “There are no rules,” she
enthuses. “There is no one in charge, no
fierce nun or man in a frock telling us how
to behave or what to believe.” Her book, by
contrast, is know-allish in tone. It casuallyderides, sloppily misrepresents and plati-
tudinously whinges, extolling the regula-
tion-heavy European Union and airily dis-
missing those who campaigned to extract
us from Brussels and its meddling.
At a railway station Hancock has a row
with an inspector who asks for her ticket.
She calls this “crumpled” little man “dar-
ling”, but still he will not relent. It is most,
most tiresome. As the stand-off continues,
she admits she nearly snapped at him: “I
bet you voted Leave.”
The book opens with Hancock affecting
surprise that she has been recommended
for an honour (a damehood). What? Forlovely, radical, alternative me? “I am not
really the public persona, the show-off, the
national treasure,” she writes, clutching
her heart. “Should I turn it down? It’s
hardly in keeping with my Quaker belief
in equality.” On she bangs about her terri-
ble dilemma before she eventually mana-
ges to square the gong with her highly
developed conscience. Question: did
Dame Humblebrag not go through all this
in 1974, when given the OBE, and in 2011,
when given the CBE?
Brexit is not the only matter preying on
our great philosopher’s mind. Despite her
strictures against the eco-damage done
by international travel, Hancock has a
second home in France and discovers, oh
woe, that her Provence hameau is underriot act Sheila Hancock said that Brexit left her “bordering on the unhinged”STEVEN MAY/ALAMYOld Rage
by Sheila HancockBloomsbury,
258pp; £18.99Sheila Hancock’s
latest moany memoir
works itself up into
a vortex of clichés,
says Quentin Letts
She attacks private
education yet she
sent her daughter
to St Paul’s school