The Final Curtain: Obituaries of Fifty Great Actors

Michael Coveney has been writing theatrical obituaries alongside reviews for several decades and makes a telling, sometimes surprising, selection of the best performers of our time, from Laurence Olivier to Alan Rickman, Peggy Ashcroft to Helen McCrory, Richard Briers to Ken Dodd. Most of these obits appeared in the Guardian, several in the Observer, the Financial Times and the Evening Standard.

The fifty articles are arranged in chronological order of each actor’s demise and constitute a ...