Rising To The surface

by Lenny Henry, Faber & Faber, hardback £20, ebook £7.99

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The first volume of

Sir Lenny Henry’s autobiography, Who

Am I, Again?, in 2019, took us back to his formative years growing up in the town of Dudley under the watchful eye of his largerthan-life Jamaican mother, Winifred.

This second volume covers his workaholic life during the Eighties and Nineties, from his success in the sketch show Three Of A Kind to setting up Comic Relief with Richard Curtis.

He focuses most of the memoir on work, his personal life taking a bit of a backseat. There’s brief mention of ex-wife Dawn French, but not much emotional openness at this point.

Where the writing feels totally from the heart is in the poignant chapters about the health deterioration of his mother, his devastation when she died and how he managed to move on, with the help of grief therapy.