Scenes from My Life

Judi Dench is Britain's best-loved actress of our time. Her very name encourages a warm and admiring response from the public, whether for Shakespearean performances (most recently the Countess in All's Well That Ends Well) or in the contemporary theatre (plays by David Hare and Hugh Whitemore among them), or on TV (the series A Fine Romance and As Time Goes By) or in the cinema (Mrs Brown, her Oscar-winning performance in Shakespeare in Love, Iris, Shipping News, Ladies in Lavender, and four James Bond films as 'M'). Now she opens her photograph albums publicly for the first time, contributing substantial memoir and captions to pictures from throughout her seventy years. The private albums are augmented by photographs showing her work across 50 years of acting - on stage, film and TV. Here are previously unseen pictures of Judi's happy childhood in York before the second world war, family holidays, schooldays and her first work as an amateur actor in her teens in York. We see her growing up, drama school and the performance that made her name as Juliet in Franco Zefferilli's famous and controversial production at the Old Vic when Judi was in her early twenties. To these are added informal shots back stage and off set, as well as photographs of her own family, her actor husband Michael Williams, daughter Finty and grandson Sam. Britain's much loved Judi Dench as you have not seen her before.