And by all accounts a very decent man.
I saw him once. It was March 26th 2011, and about 500,000 of us were marching through central London to protest against the cuts to public services being implemented at the time (and ever since!). It was a huge demo, 5 hours long, making its way slowly from the Embankment to a rally in Hyde Park. We'd reached the top of Whitehall where it opens into Trafalgar Square (the roads had been closed) and there was Alan Rickman, leaning against a lamp post on the traffic island in the middle of the road, surveying the slow-moving crowd, probably waiting for a friend. He looked a bit bored. By the time I clocked that it was him (he was very recognisably himself) I'd passed already.
I've read that, politically, he was a man who leaned to the left, where the heart is. |