'It was a very strange little world we had as children'

'Downton Abbey' star Hugh Bonneville has written his first work of fiction and tells Helen Coffey his own life entered the pages of 'Rory Sparkes and the Elephant in the Room'

- Helen Coffey

Mr Brown is very nice. I can't tell you how much of a relief it is to write those words. Yes, I'm aware that Hugh Bonneville is merely an actor and an entirely separate entity to his beloved – and, crucially, fictional – character in the Paddington film franchise. Still. I'm not sure my inner child could have coped with our favourite Peruvian bear's adoptive British dad being, well, nasty.

Luckily, Bonneville, equally known for his 15-year stint as Downton Abbey's Lord Grantham, is anything but - the 61-year-old is all easy charm, smiling eloquence and thoughtful, genuine answers when I chat to him over Zoom. He somehow manages to exude warmth, even through the clinical blue light of a screen. Indulging my inner child is probably the order of the day anyway, given that we're here to chat about his latest non-acting venture: a children's book entitled Rory Sparkes and the Elephant in the Room. It's his first foray into fiction and second literary endeavour following the self-penned 2022 memoir Playing Under the Piano. As it turns out, the latter unwittingly ended up inspiring the former.

“I wrote a rather too substantial chunk about my childhood, to the extent that the editor said, ‘I’m getting a bit bored. Could we move the narrative on a bit, please?’” he recalls wryly. “But maybe, on reflection, that meant that I quite enjoyed exploring my childhood, or at least had very vivid recollections of it.”

In fact, both the story and characters in