Walking Shadow by Greg Doran review – Shakespeare’s healing power

After the death of his husband, Antony Sher, the former RSC director embarks on a quest to see every First FolioThis is really two books in one. The first part consists of the diaries written by Antony Sher in the six months before his death from liver cancer in December 2021. The second, longer part is a record by his husband and partner of 35 years, Greg Doran, of an obsessive quest to see as many of the more than 200 extant copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio as possible. Taken together, the two parts amount to a very moving record of one person’s confrontation with death and of his partner’s attempt to cope with survival.Sher, in his multiple roles as actor, artist and writer, was always a shrewd observer, and what he called The Dying Diaries show a characteristic mix of candour, resilience and wit. He doesn’t minimise the horror and writes at one point that “this cancer thing is like a bomb in our household”, which sits there unobtrusively and goes off at unexpect