This book is perfect. It's a delight to listen to someone wander through treasured memories, expound on classic theater in a way that captures how the plays can be interpreted without being overly academic, and to feel like the history of English theater is being set down. Judi Dench so obviously cares deeply about Shakespeare and how the characters she played felt, and she is a through line to a history of art in England that isn't talked about as much. It feels like tying a string around theater in Shakespeare's time and drawing it all the way to modern times.

I wish I could express just how heartbreakingly lovely it is to hear someone talk about such a key part of who she is and how deeply it is engrained in the heart of an art that's been going on for hundreds of years.