Rachael Stirling has written a biography of her mother, the actor Dame Diana Rigg, six years after her death from cancer, blending memoir and research into a portrait described as funny, intimate and joyous. Rigg, best known for playing Emma Peel in the 1960s series The Avengers, was celebrated for portraying fierce, complicated women on stage and screen and for her early insistence on equal pay, but she resisted being labelled a feminist and avoided authorised biographies during her lifetime out of a dislike of appearing earnest.

Titled All About My Mother, the book draws on Stirling's own memories alongside Rigg's performances, writings, interviews and press cuttings kept by her grandmother. It recounts colourful anecdotes, including an unwanted encounter with Benny Hill and a public spat with George Lazenby, as well as more personal material on Rigg's intense, doting relationship with her daughter, including a boarding-school bond the pair described as almost co-dependent. The review, published in the Guardian, praises the book as a beautifully written and self-mocking tribute to a woman who never took herself too seriously.