Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cumming review – the actor on his tough childhood

Revelations about his relationship with his father are raw-edged and painful, yet Cumming proves determined to crush bad memories by living a good life

In the acknowledgements of this memoir, Alan Cumming thanks his agent for “not exhorting me to do a ‘my fabulous celebrity life’ type of book”, and despite occasional references to hosting charity galas and wearing Alexander McQueen, Not My Father’s Son tells two stories that unfold in places far removed from that glamour. One starts in the Scottish forest where Cumming grew up terrorised by his violent, philandering father; the other ends in Malaya where his maternal grandfather, Tommy Darling, died in a mysterious shooting accident in 1951. His appearance on Who Do You Think You Are? allowed Cumming to uncover Darling’s life and death, and the show’s framework has a slight distancing effect, but the actor’s writing about his relationship with his father is raw-edged, stinging and inescapably painful. Just when he thinks he has conquered his past, an end-of-life revelation from his father drags him back in, but Cumming’s unsurprising gift for drama never overwhelms the cold realities of the damage done, nor his joyous determination to crush bad memories by living a good life.

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