--- title: "Editor's Letter: Judi Dench Wrote Her Memoir at 91, So It Is Not Too Late for You" description: Judi Dench wrote her memoir at 91 while losing her sight. Our Editor's Letter on the question in her title and why it is not too late for you. author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-11-05T13:29:34.104Z updated: 2026-11-05T13:29:52.222Z canonical: https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/editors-letter-november-2026-judi-dench-it-is-not-too-late image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/pexels-26285735.webp categories: Memoir content_type: Letter from the Editor region: Global publication: Rich Books schema_type: Article about: - type: Person name: Dame Judi Dench --- Dame Judi Dench has carried one question into every rehearsal room for more than seventy years: is it too late to make a run for it? She has played Shakespeare at Stratford, won an Oscar and spent seventeen years as M in the James Bond films, and the question has stayed with her through all of it. This autumn she [made it the title of her memoir](https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/judi-dench-memoir-is-it-too-late-to-make-a-run-for-it), written with her friend and writing partner Brendan O'Hea and published by Michael Joseph on 22nd October. ### Book: Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? *A Memoir* By Dame Judi Dench Judi Dench's fourth book, written with Brendan O'Hea, tells her story from childhood to the present: pranks on and off stage, her best-known screen roles, her marriage to Michael Williams and her love of nature and animals. Published in the UK on 22nd October 2026 and in the US by St. Martin's Press on 3rd November 2026. [Waterstones](https://www.waterstones.com/books/search/term/is+it+too+late+to+make+a+run+for+it+judi+dench) I chose her book for our November cover for that title. Most of us ask the same question in private. You may have raised your children and watched them leave home. You may have spent thirty years in work that never fitted you. You may have kept a novel in a drawer since university. I asked it myself when my three children had grown and left home, and I found my answer on tours for my own books, listening to the readers who came to meet me. Dame Judi is 91. She was diagnosed with macular degeneration in 2012, and in October she told BBC Radio 4 that her sight has failed so far that she can no longer act. 'I can't do a play anymore. I can't do a film anymore,' she said. She could not see the bluebells in her garden this summer. She cannot read the pages of her own book, and she made it anyway, telling the story of her childhood in York, the pranks she played on fellow actors and her thirty-year marriage to the actor Michael Williams. The question sounds like fear, but you only ask it about something you still want. Nobody asks whether it is too late to do a thing they have no wish to do. When you ask it, you have already named what you want: the course, the book, the move to the sea, the first dance class at sixty, the call you have put off for ten years. Dame Judi has her own rule for the stage, and she shared it with NPR: 'You're only as good as you are that evening.' An actor cannot bank last season's applause. She earns each evening in front of the audience in the room. Your age, your setbacks and the years you feel you lost do not decide your evening either. What you do tonight decides it. This issue gives you plenty of evenings to begin with. Yiyun Li won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir with [Things in Nature Merely Grow](https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/things-in-nature-merely-grow-pulitzer-2026), her account of losing her two sons. The Booker Prize names its winner on 9th November, and we show you [how to read the six shortlisted novels](https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/booker-prize-2026-shortlist) before the verdict. You will also find [the translated books on the National Book Award shortlist](https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/national-book-award-2026-translated-literature), [GMA's November book club pick](https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/whale-harbor-book-club-guide) and [the eight books that Waterstones and Barnes & Noble both chose](https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/waterstones-book-of-the-year-2026-shortlist) for Book of the Year. ### Book: Things in Nature Merely Grow By Yiyun Li Winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Yiyun Li writes about losing both her sons, Vincent in 2017 and James in 2024, with an austere focus on facts, language and the persistence of life. Addressed to James, the book describes ways of living thoughtfully alongside loss: gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, and learning the piano. [Waterstones](https://www.waterstones.com/books/search/term/things+in+nature+merely+grow) On 17th November Dame Judi is due on the stage of the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury to talk about the book with Brendan O'Hea, and only returns are left. At 91, with her sight failing, she still chooses the stage over the door. When you ask yourself whether it is too late, take her answer and make your run, towards the thing you want. It is not too late. Marina Nani Editor-in-Chief **Buy the book:** Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? on [Waterstones](https://www.waterstones.com/books/search/term/9780241799536) / [Barnes & Noble](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/is-it-too-late-to-make-a-run-for-it-judi-dench/1149573619?ean=9781250438928)