Russell Brand's next book for Bluebird looks at mentoring

Bluebird is publishing a new book from Russell Brand about the role of mentors in improving our lives: Mentors: How to Help and Be Helped.

Following on from Recovery: Freedom from our Addictions, the new book is "a meditation on how important both helping others and accepting help are to lasting happiness". It will chart the impact significant people have had on Brand's life, from his first addictions counsellor to some of the  internationally respected thinkers who have guested on his podcast "Under the Skin".

Brand owns he has mentors in every area of his life, as a comic, dad, recovering drug addict and spiritual being, some of whom were chosen consciously, others not. The point of the book, he wrote, is "to understand this process [of mentorship] and to improve it".

He commented further: "In this book I will talk to you about my mentors, how they have enhanced my life in practical and esoteric, obvious and unusual ways by showing me that it is possible to become the person I want to be in spite of the inner and outer obstacles I face. I will encourage you to find mentors of your own and explain how you may better use the ones you already have. Furthermore I will tell you about my experiences mentoring others and how invaluable that has been on my ongoing journey to self-acceptance and how it has helped me to transform from a bewildered and volatile vagabond to a (mostly) present and (usually) focussed husband and father."

The book is the second title in a two-book world rights deal Carole Tonkinson secured at Frankfurt two years ago. She added: "Russell has been mentored by an extraordinarily wise group of people and he, in turn, has passed that knowledge on to the many people he has helped. Now he prepares to share his hard-won wisdom with all of us in his inimitable breathtaking, funny, poignant style. We feel privileged to be working with Russell on this important book."

Mentors: How to Help and Be Helped will be published as a B-format hardback on January 24th 2019. It will be simultaneously in all English speaking markets in print, e-book and audio, and is a lead title for Henry Holt in the US.