Just Me: Sheila Hancock

After the death of her husband, actor John Thaw, actress Sheila Hancock knew that the void could not be filled with gardening, grannying and grumbling. So she put their much-loved house in France on the market and went on a series of adventures. She tried holidaying alone - invisibility and budget flights. She tried travelling in a group - but the questions she asked were never the ones the guide wanted to answer. She tried relaxing - difficult. Finally, she found that her travels and new discoveries were taking her back to the past: to consider her generation, the last to experience World War II - and the kind of person it had made her. Sheila - whether facing down burglars or lax JetStar staff (cross her at your peril...) or making friend with waiters and taxi drivers, whether unearthing secrets in Budapest, exulting in the art of Venice or mingling with the Milan Mafia - is always stimulating company. If you can't say just what you like when you're seventy five, when can you?