I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You by Miranda Hart review – chronic illness and love at last

After years of misery with undiagnosed Lyme disease, the entertainer shares her lessons for living

Miranda Hart’s latest book feels unexpected coming from a comic actor famed for her on-screen pratfalls and love of all things silly. I had assumed it would be a joke-filled memoir reflecting on the Call the Midwife star’s path to success, the kind of which are regularly churned out by comics in the run-up to Christmas. But while I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You has its confessional moments, it is intended as a serious manual for living. For Hart, the wisdom is hard won, coming as it does after a decade of darkness and misery during which her career was put on hold.

We learn how, for much of her life, Hart has been unwell. From her late teens onwards she suffered from “too many itises” – bronchitis, tonsilitis, pericarditis, gastroenteritis, labyrinthitis – along with blood clots, adrenal fatigue, cysts, migraines and more. Many were the times she would wake up exhausted, wondering how she would get through the day. Matters reached a head a decade ago when she collapsed at home, after which she was bedbound with a “total ghost-like weakness”. Just a short walk outside “was as hard as anything I had done. I would stand in the road feeling as if I had to remind my brain how to put one foot in front of the other. I would look at a cup of tea on the table and wonder if I had the strength to take a sip.”

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