Part intimate memoir, part insightful commentary, the book shows how the Dame and the Bard make a winning combination.

Mischievous and convivial, Dench delights in sending up O’Hea whenever his questions become too probing or pretentious.

[Dench's] passion for Shakespeare shines through every conversation reproduced here.

Utterly delightful.

An enchantment of a book.

[Dench's] love of the text on a line level and her knowledge of the characters is to the fore.

Serious and thoughtful without being stuffy, this work shows Dench’s terrific sense of fun as she relates hilarious anecdotes that will make readers laugh out loud..

This is an enchantment of a book. It reflects the considered views of Judi Dench, a great actress now in her ninth decade, nearly blind, who has a photographic memory of her life performing the plays of Shakespeare. Her interlocutor in these conversations is Brendan O’Hea of London’s Globe Theatre and the effect is ravishingly sane and deep and wise.

...this is a perceptive yet light-hearted read, suffused with Dench’s trademark twinkly-eyed humor. The format is clean and simple, a chapter-by-chapter question and answer trail through Dench’s interactions with the Shakespearean canon at so many of the country’s leading theatres. O’Hea asks something and off Dench goes with her insights and recollections, taking the work (mostly) seriously and herself not at all. Her enduring lifelong love of these plays, their humanity and universality, is unmistakable, but this is a refreshingly honest and unacademic take.

[Dench's] memory is razor-sharp and her knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays is encyclopedic.

Exuberant.