‘My father said he’d blow my brains out’: Richard E Grant tells of grief and trauma

The actor, whose wife died last year, talks to Desert Island Discs about his relationship with his parents growing up in Africa

Five days after marking the anniversary of his wedding to his late wife, a grieving Richard E Grant will talk candidly about surviving an upsetting childhood in Eswatini (then called Swaziland) before finding sanctuary in his 38-year marriage.

The Oscar-nominated film star, who appears as the guest on Desert Island Discs on Sunday morning, met his wife - the renowned dialect expert Joan Washington - when, as an aspiring young actor, he hired her as a voice coach. Grant details the shock of Washington's diagnosis with lung cancer in 2020 and tells how they prioritised time together in the months before her death in September last year.