Dame Sheila Hancock still feels the presence of her late husband John Thaw.
The 89-year-old actress was married to “Inspector Morse” star John from 1973 until his death in 2002, who died of cancer at the age of 60. Today she regrets not having “tried to understand his fascination with the universe.”
She said: “I remember John always asking me to go and look at the stars with him in our French house – we don’t see them anymore in big, over-exposed cities – and I would take a quick look and say, ‘Yes, beautiful’ and then go and cook dinner. He would stand there for ages and I think now that he probably knew that feeling of being part of the universe. And I didn’t understand it. How sad that I was too busy to try.”
The Olivier Award-winning actress, who has daughters Melanie (57) and Joanna (48) from her marriage to John, added that John spent a “very long time” stargazing immediately before his death and that now, two decades later, she can still “feel his presence”. She wonders if she will ever be able to “put aside” her own “rational approach” to life before her own death.
In her new autobiography, Old Rage, she wrote: “On our last visit to our French home, when he was terminally ill, he stood, though weak, stock still for more than half an hour, enjoying the view of the mountains, the forest and the blue, blue sky.
“Then again, on the last night, he sat outside for a long time, staring at the stars. Is it any wonder that now, years after his death, I still feel his presence and his energy? Can I ever, before my own inevitable death, give up my reasonable, rational approach to life and think about the inexplicable?”
However, Sheila also explained that she did not want to comment on what it would have been like to spend her final years with John. She did, however, joke that he “quite enjoyed” the COVID-19 lockdowns.
She said: “I don’t allow myself to think about what it would have been like to spend my twilight years with the man I loved. I refuse to attribute opinions and behaviour to dead people, but I can’t help but think that John would have quite enjoyed that situation. Driven by the Protestant work ethic that we both were, he would have enjoyed an excuse not to work 13 hours a day on a film set. He had no friends apart from those he worked with, so it never happened that he invited people over for dinner or a drink anyway. He liked it that way.”
