Description

Legendary actress Diana Rigg was a force to be reckoned with. Her 50+-year, multi-award-winning career included everything from the iconic smart-talking, cat-suited Emma Peel in the Avengers to being the only Bond girl 007 ever married, to iconic stage performances in Mother Courage, Jumpers and Medea and unforgettable TV appearances in Detectorists (in which Rachael played her daughter) and as Lady Tyrell in Game of Thrones. She never wrote an autobiography (but she clearly thought a lot about it) — her highly unconventional life was full of incident and drama and she knew everyone.

Perhaps you’ve never heard of Diana Rigg. That doesn’t matter, for in these pages I intend to conjure her up in all her glory, and I promise you will feel as if you do know her by the end. In fact, I hope you will feel like you’ve known her always, been pissed together often, howled with laughter and sobbed alongside her for all eighty-two of her glorious years on Earth. Her story, her outlook, her legacy, is a lesson in living this life to the fullest: in following your instincts, in taking pleasure wherever there is pleasure to be taken, in loving with all your strength and might, in laughing, always at yourself first, and in being curious, now and forever.

Her only child Rachael Stirling is a successful actress too – but it turns out she is also a wonderful writer. Mother and daughter were always very close and when Diana was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she moved in with Rachael and her husband Guy Garvey as well as their young son.

All About My Mother is Rachael’s honest, funny, gossipy, sad and extremely moving attempt to bring the woman she knew and loved back to life so you can get to know her too.