The book, though, ends with Gambon’s own words. It is almost the last time they talk, shortly before lockdown, and his memory was such that talking with him was “like watching a moth batter itself against the light, unbearable,” Ellis writes. Over the phone he asked her, bewildered: “Where am I? Have you seen my stone? I can’t find my stone.” He never acted again. Yet to Ellis, and to all the greats she quotes, he clearly never stopped being — and never will stop being — “The Great Gambon”.
