Albasaor

Interior designer Nicky always used to know how to make the best of things. Ever since she lost her husband though, things haven’t been easy. She’s had to raise her two daughters alone and she’s so proud to see them all grown up, and she knows that’s down to her. But she can’t help but feel like she doesn’t know what to do with her life now. Then her best friend begs her to help out. Jenny is a TV exec and her new renovation show is in peril. Only Nicky can help. The catch – Nicky needs to fly to Provence… tomorrow.

Following Phyllida Law’s wonderful and acclaimed Notes to My Mother-in-Law - which comically and tenderly documented the author’s relationship with her husband’s mother who lived with the family for 17 years - we now have a chronicle of Phyllida’s relationship with her own mother who suffered from dementia. Recently widowed, bringing up her own two daughters (actresses Emma and Sophie Thompson), and working as a successful actress herself, Phyllida went up and down to Scotland to spend as much time with her ailing mother as she could manage.

As well as being a mother (to the actresses Sophie and Emma Thompson) and a devoted carer to her own mother and mother-in-law, Phyllida Law is also a distinguished actress, and Dead Now of Course is the tale of her early acting career. As a young member of a travelling company, Phyllida learned to cope with whatever was thrown at her, from making her own false eyelashes to battling flammable costumes and rogue cockroaches.