Despite old age and old rage, there's always reasons for joy writes beloved English actor Sheila Hancock in her new book

She received an OBE for services to drama in 1974 and a CBE in 2011. She received a Damehood for services to drama and charity in 2021.

Since the 1950s she has enjoyed a career across film, television, theatre and radio. Her first big television role was in the BBC sitcom The Rag Trade in the early 1960s.

She has directed and acted for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre.

She recently starred in the twelfth series of Great Canal Journeys which was a joy to watch.

Her first book, Ramblings of an Actress, was published in 1987. Following the death of her husband, John Thaw, Sheila Hancock wrote a memoir of their marriage, The Two of Us, which was a No. 1 bestseller and won the British Book Award for Author of the Year in 2004. And it's my favourite.

Her memoir of her widowhood, Just Me, also a bestseller, was published in 2008.

And now there is Old Rage (Bloomsbury, $29.99).

Sheila's writing is totally honest. All her books have left me in tears or giggling. She is a naturally gifted writer.

Sheila looked like she was managing old age. She had weathered and even thrived in widowhood, taking on acting roles that would have been demanding for a woman half her age. She had energy, friends, a devoted family, a lovely home.

Best of all, she could still remember her lines.

So why, at 89, having sailed past supposedly disturbing milestones 50, 70 even 80 without a qualm, did she suddenly feel so furious? Shocking diagnoses, Brexit and bereavement seemed to knock her from every quarter.

And that was before lockdown.

Home 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.

In Old Rage, she opens up about her ninth decade.

It all starts in November 2020 when she has been told in the strictest of confidence that she has been recommended to the late Queen Elizabeth for the Damehood in the New Year 2021 Honours List.

The letter reads: "Before the Prime Minister submits your name to Her Majesty the Queen for approval, we would be glad to know that this would be agreeable to you."

Sheila writes: "No, no it wouldn't. I don't feel agreeable at all. I feel sick with inadequacy. A lifetime of getting away with it does not merit award. What if the Queen disapproves and rejects me?

"Should I turn it down? I can't even discuss it with anyone because it is 'in confidence'. And we are all locked down anyway."

Funny, feisty, honest, she makes for brilliant company as she talks about her life as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a widow, an actor, a friend and looks at a world so different from the wartime world of her childhood.

And yet despite age, despite rage she finds there are always reasons for joy.