{"id":599453,"date":"2026-05-23T07:58:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T07:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/599453\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T07:58:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T07:58:07","slug":"circus-kids-inspired-hugh-bonnevilles-debut-childrens-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/599453\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Circus kids’ inspired Hugh Bonneville’s debut children’s book"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actor Hugh Bonneville has spoken about his debut children’s book and how it was inspired by his childhood in south-east London.<\/p>\n

The story, Rory Sparkes and the Elephant in the Room, follows a schoolboy dreamer whose life is turned upside down by the arrival of the circus.<\/p>\n

The Paddington and Downton Abbey actor, who was appearing at the Charleston Festival, external<\/a> in Lewes, said: “It’s based on true incidences of when I was growing up.<\/p>\n

“The circus used to come to town and circus kids sometimes came to school on the elephant, which is about the most exotic mode of transport ever seen in south-east London.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Actor Hugh Bonneville has spoken about his debut children’s book and how it was inspired by his childhood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-599453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}