The heroic comeback of Ben Howard

Two mini-strokes made the songwriter re-evaluate. Now he’s back with a new album and is ready for Glasto, he tells William Hosie

- William Hosie

TANNED but a little weary, Ben Howard is half way through his European tour when I catch him in a studio in Spain. He’s actually just been sightseeing, he tells me, along the route between the Basque Country and Santiago de Compostela. “It’s quite an incredible place,” he remarks. “People do that pilgrimage for all sorts of reasons.”

For the past 15 months, the Ivor Novello winner has been on a difficult journey of his own. Last March, he was sitting in his garden when he suddenly found himself unable to think clearly, form sentences or speak, for almost an hour. A month later, the same thing happened again, and he found out after seeing a doctor that he’d suffered two mini-strokes. This Friday, a week after releasing his new album, he opens the Other Stage at Glastonbury. Which seems astonishing.

A wry and introspective character, Howard sees his recovery not as a triumph of strength but as a lesson in humility and finding out what truly matters. “You realise how fortunate you are to have a family,” he tells me. “What a miraculous, incredible thing that is.”

The songwriter — the child of musical parents — has spent his life “going back and forth” between Devon and Ibiza, where his grandfather set up shop in the bohemian Fifties. It reflects his restless musical spirit. His debut album, Every Kingdom, was nominated for a Mercury Prize when he was only 24, and in the years since he has continuously reinvented himself, moving on from the folk that made him famous and ditching the buttoned-up collar he was wedded to throughout the 2010s.