In memoir, Judi Dench recalls late husband Michael Williams: 'He wasn't well enough to travel'
Judi Dench opens up in her memoir about her husband’s final day, and the way she tells it hits harder than you’re ready for.
When Michael Williams was too ill to travel for a Vatican honor, Judi Dench turned their home into a chapel. In her new memoir Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, Dench writes that friends and family filled the house as a priest conferred her husband’s papal knighthood at his bedside. Their daughter, Finty, rigged a baby monitor so guests downstairs in the sitting room could hear the service taking place upstairs.
“I wish he’d been able to receive his knighthood in the way that it was meant to happen – at Westminster Cathedral – but he wasn’t well enough to travel.”
Williams had been battling lung cancer. He died on January 11, 2001, at age 65.
Dench and Williams first met in the 1960s while touring with the Royal Shakespeare Company, then married in 1971 at St Mary’s Church in Hampstead. In the book’s Q&A format with Brendan O’Hea, she’s asked whether her career ever overshadowed his; Dench says if Williams felt that way, he never said so, and he stayed focused on his own work and goals.
Robin Williams ’ quiet assist
Dench also shares a moment of kindness from Robin Williams during a visit to Billy Connolly’s home in Scotland. After a bonfire in the woods, Williams noticed Michael struggling on the walk back up. He offered to help; when Michael politely declined, Robin found a gentler way to be there anyway.
“And Robin said, ‘Well, I think I’ll ride shotgun anyway’, which was such a lovely thing to say.”
Dench recalled the exchange in an interview with PEOPLE. Robin Williams died in 2014 at age 63.