PanThe Sunday Times (UK)To anyone planning on reading these diaries, I would strongly advise you keep Rickman’s IMDb and Wikipedia pages open on your laptop, plus Google to hand ... The editor had more than a million words of entries to work with and condensing them to 500 pages can’t have been an easy job, but if only he had added some context and background information it would be a less maddeningly opaque read ... Crucially, these diaries were not written for the purpose of publication ... I would count myself as an average fan, however, and by the second half of his diaries was finding it hard not to love him less ... The book is a relentlessly waspish grumble about fellow actors delivering disappointing performances ... He is in danger of casting himself as a parody of a whingeing lefty luvvie ... Unless the diarist is a saint, their unedited thoughts will always look unedifying in public. A diary is a safe space for our worst side. I wouldn’t want people reading my ungracious rants or grandiose quibbles, and felt increasingly uneasy about the posthumous publication of Rickman’s ... The one thing he never, ever grumbles about is his marriage, which sounds like one of the happiest in showbusiness. The book’s final pages are heartbreaking. As the cancer takes grip, the entries shorten and this gloriously expansive life contracts to a bleak checklist of hospital appointments. He died with his wife by his side, and her afterword is haunting.
