Dame Judi Dench reveals the emotional way she spent final day with late husband

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Dame Judi Dench has reflected on her late husband Michael Williams’ final moments, in a particularly poignant moment from her new memoir, Is it Too Late to Make a Run for It?

The legendary actor, 91, wrote about the moment Williams, also an actor, was recognised for his commitment to Catholicism with an award from the Vatican as he became a Knight of St Gregory.

Dench hosted her husband’s papal knighthood ceremony in their bedroom the day before he died.

“The day before Mikey died, he was awarded a papal knighthood by the Vatican,” Dench wrote.

“His Catholicism was everything to him – he’d been the chairman of the British Catholic Stage Guild and went to Mass most Sundays.

“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.”

Instead, the couple hosted the celebration at their house, and “made an occasion of it” with “so many people” turning up to their home.

Dench remembered that there were “too many to fit in the bedroom upstairs” where they held the ceremony, so their daughter Tara Cressida “Finty” Williams set up a baby monitor so that people downstairs could listen as well.

The knighthood celebration took place on 10 January 2001, just one day before Michael died aged 65 after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

The honour itself had been awarded to him in November 2000.

Dench and Williams first met on tour with the Royal Shakespeare company in the 1960s, and got married in 1971 before she gave birth to Finty in 1972.

The couple also worked together on occasions, appearing in the television sitcom A Fine Romance and the 1999 film Tea with Mussolini.

Dench has often spoken about the heartbreak of losing her husband and how much she continues to miss him more than two decades after his death.

Her new memoir was written with her close friend, actor and director Brendan O’Hea, although she has admitted that she had not put much thought into the idea that their conversations were being turned into a book.

“He wrote it by stealth – we are such great friends that he sort of crept up on me,” she said. “I have no idea how long it took to write. We would just chat and he would write.”

There are plenty of revelations in the book, including where Dench dimissed longstanding rumours that she fell out with her close friend and fellow actor Dame Maggie Smith over dressing room arrangements.

“I mentioned you and Maggie Smith because you occasionally hear of actors falling out over the dressing room they’ve been allocated. It’s to do with hierarchy and status,” O’Hea told Dench.

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