An enjoyable memoir from famous British actor Hugh Bonneville, this book is subtitled From Downton to Darkest Peru. However, a good half of the book is about his stage career, notably with the National Theatre and RSC, which is interesting and well put-together, but might not be so fascinating for readers expecting it all to be about Downton Abbey and Paddington. The book has a lot of reflections on the process of acting and the actor’s life, with plenty of anecdotes – some funny, some hair-raising – and about his family too, specifically his father who had dementia, his mother who worked for the secret service and his brother who passed away suddenly. The book has a lot of personality to it (not always the case with memoirs, I’ve found) and although I read a paper copy rather than the audiobook, I could hear Hugh’s voice reading it in my head!

Some parts of the book that I really liked were memories of Maggie Smith, the set-up for the blood-spewing scene in Downton, meeting Michael Bond, and winging it on stage as a Roman soldier without having rehearsed. Not all of the book was especially riveting, as he tended to go into detail about plays that I don’t know, complaints about auditions, and stagecraft in general. It’s his story though and I appreciated that’s all interesting to him. There is a good selection of photos. While it’s not one of my top memoir reads, I liked it and would recommend it for anyone interested in acting and in Hugh’s career.

Published by Little, Brown, 2022.