Sir Lenny Henry living his dream writing stories
Sir Lenny Henry is one of those personalities impossibly difficult to define: a multifaceted performer who has weaved his way into the very fabric of British culture.
Starting out as an impressionist on 70s talent show New Faces, he was part of the riotous Tiswas gang that shook up Saturday morning kids TV, before going on to become one of the leading lights of the alternative comedy scene – while still managing to secure his own eponymous show on prime time BBC1.
Then, in 1985, he joined forces with Richard Curtis – Blackadder co-creator and the pen behind such sparkling rom-coms as Love Actually and Notting Hill – to launch Comic Relief. The charity behemoth has since raised more than £1 billion for projects in both the UK and Africa.
But Lenny was just getting started
A move into serious drama followed, and while the titular role of Othello was undoubtedly a brave place to begin his Shakespearian career, his performance received critical acclaim.
Soon he was juggling a slew of highprofile TV roles with comedy on both stage and screen, all the while remaining firmly at the Comic Relief helm.
And then – as if all that were not enough – he turned his hand to writing, penning the first of two autobiographies in 2019 before embarking on a collection of children’s books.
The Boy with Wings, a superhero story, set the ball rolling in 2021, followed by fantasy adventure The Book of Legends.
“I wanted to write the kind of book I’d have loved to read when I was a boy,” explains the 64-year-old Brummie of his decision to move into print.
When I was growing up there was no one like me in books, and it hadn’t changed much by the time I was sharing stories with my daughter.
So I decided to write one, The Boy with Wings, in which loads of kids would see themselves."
“When it came to my next one, The Book of Legends, I wanted to be even more inclusive, so I created a character called Bran who just happens to be deaf. There aren’t many deaf characters in children’s books and I didn’t think that was fair."
Everyone should be able to see themselves in the stories they read.”
Lenworth George Henry was born in Dudley, in the West Midlands, on August 29 1958.
Officially the fifth of seven children for Winston and Winifred Henry – though Winston was not his biological father – he was the first to be born in the United Kingdom following the family’s emigration from Jamaica.
In Who Am I, Again? the tale of his early years, he reveals that home wasn’t always a happy place, Winnie’s violent behaviour culminating in an incident which saw her hit him in the face with a frying pan.
He has also spoken openly about the racial abuse the family suffered, with slogans such as ‘Keep Britain White’ daubed on walls around town. Small wonder, therefore, that the young Lenny sought solace in his favourite authors.
“Reading was such an escape for me as a child. I journeyed off on so many different adventures, thanks to what I found in the library. Now I want every child to have the chance of that same experience; that sense of leaving their homework and troubles behind and entering different realms through the pages of books.
“I grew up with things like Just William and Jennings and reading about superheroes, fantasy and magic. But what I loved most of all was comics. So, for all those comic strip adventurers out there, The Boy with Wings includes a comic featuring Tunde [the hero] created by Mark Buckingham, the Marvelman and DC Comics whizz.”
Lenny discovered at an early age that making people laugh was a good way of diffusing situations
“Bullied every day” at school, he found that his impressions were a great way to win friends, deflecting attention from the fact of being “different”.
Today his love of inducing laughter remains undimmed and his novels have reconnected him with the heady, madcap humour that we grown-ups recall from Tiswas and The Lenny Henry Show.
“You need to grip your reader, don’t you? And if you make it funny they’re going to want to read on and hear the next joke,” he explains.
“Kids just want to know what’s round the next corner, so keep it pacy and packed with humour and you’ll keep their attention until the last page.”
Since making the transition to dramatic acting, Sir Lenny has notched up a series of hit shows (Broadchurch, The Syndicate, Hope and Glory), done more Shakespeare (The Comedy of Errors at the National) and created August in England, his well-received one-man show about the Windrush scandal, now on at London’s Bush Theatre.
In addition, he is currently on our screens as part of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings spin-off The Rings of Power and Netflix fantasy drama The Witcher: Blood Origin.
He is also the voice of Martin Tenbones in the Netflix adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s comic book The Sandman.
So where on earth does he find the time to write?
“During the pandemic I wrote in my pyjamas, with a plate of Jammie Dodgers beside me.
Now that meetings and travel are back, I have to be a whole lot more disciplined and I write whenever I can. It might be on a train, or sitting in the back of the car. Straight onto my laptop. I literally sit down and the ideas start flowing. I love it!”
Like so much of his work, his children’s novels have proved exceedingly popular, chalking up multi-starred reviews from readers and critics alike.
And yet, in typically self-deprecating style, Sir Lenny – knighted for services to drama and charity in 2015 – highlights visits to schools, and events such as World Book Day, as the best part of being a children’s author. He loves keeping up with the kids and hearing all the latest jokes.
