The actor wrote about everything from his thoughts on acting to his views on friendships and politics in his journals. Rickman, who died in 2016 at age 69 following a battle with cancer, started with his journal in the early 1990s with the intention of publishing them.
Publisher Canongate has acquired the rights to the book, reportedly titled The Diaries of Alan Rickman. It will be edited by Alan Taylor who also put together The Country Diaries, a set of pastoral journalists from Beatrix Potter, Dorothy Wordsworth, John Fowles, and more. Rickman’s wife Rima Horton is additionally looking forward to the book.
“I’m delighted that Canongate is going to be publishing Alan’s diaries and couldn’t have wished for a finer appointment of an editor than Alan Taylor. The diaries reveal not just Alan Rickman the actor but the important Alan – his sense of humor, his sharp observation, his craftsmanship, and his devotion to the arts,” Horton said.
Taylor said Rickman’s diaries were “anecdotal, indiscreet, witty, gossipy and utterly candid”. “They make compulsive reading and offer a peerless insight into the everyday life of a legendry actor, who was as beloved in the US as he surely was in the UK,” he added.
Rickman, whose distinctive voice still rings in fans’ ears, was also a passionate theatre-goer who reviewed plays he attended and shared behind-the-scenes stories from the set of “Harry Potter”, which he was part of for a decade, between 2001 and 2011.
