Dearest Brother is a memoir that follows the author’s quest to re-discover the brother he lost through suicide in 1980. After thirty years of anger and guilt that caused him to suppress and deny his brother and his short life, his journey takes him back into his own shared past of a post-war childhood and boarding school separation from itinerant parents. Then off to Western Australia where his brother spent four formative years at university during the late sixties and early seventies.

Eight thousand miles from home with only a fortnightly letter to maintain the family ties, his letters provide a unique narrative as he negotiated a time of cultural and political turbulence where new-found freedoms liberated and confused in equal measure. Sex and drugs and wild dreams of a better future pervade his student life.

Next, the inquiry moves back to the UK, where Andrew must excavate his own suppressed memories of a brother whose life had glittered with promise but was now blighted by a growing mental illness.