When Maureen Paton approached Alan Rickman to ask for his co-operation with this biography, he declined in a "scrupulously polite" note. Undeterred, Ms Paton proceeded to analyse the handwriting: "the influence of his art-school training is immediately apparent in the calligraphy," she declares. She may well have much to say about the 50-year-old actor that is valuable and thought-provoking, but I fell, I'm afraid, at the first hurdle - the prologue. "You can just see how this tall and scornful perfectionist, the nonpareil of nit-pickers, came to embody a formidable intelligence and reined-in power . . ." Oh, dear. A.W.