Actress Sheila Hancock is enjoying her later years and her new start as a novelist

Sheila Hancock: 'I’ve got 10 years left and nothing to lose’

'I did go on a date with a gentleman, and halfway through supper I was thinking, 'Did I switch on my electric blanket?’ says Sheila Hancock Photo: Rex Features

By Matthew Stadlen

The Telegraph -  02 Nov 2014

At 81, Sheila Hancock likes to joke that she only has another 10 years to live. But far from resting on her laurels, the award-winning actress, best-selling writer and grandmother of seven has been busy launching a new career – as a novelist.

We meet soon after the publication of her debut novel, Miss Carter’s War, which has been well received. She was already an accomplished author of autobiography, having won plaudits in 2005 for The Two of Us, about her life with her second husband, the late actor John Thaw, and in 2009 for Just Me, in which she chronicled life getting used to being without him. But when her publisher Bloomsbury approached her to write fiction, she didn’t think she could do it. 
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