Synopsis
Dearest Brother is a gripping 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."Forty years ago, my brother killed himself. At the time I played the part of a grieving brother, but it was a sham. Just beneath the surface there was a pulse of anger, fed by a sense of guilt which corrupted my memories of him and diminished the last of any brotherly love.It may be late in the day but now I am determined to re-discover my love for the brother I lost and perhaps understand why he ended his life."An excellent book: wonderfully well written, honest and extremely wise." Nick Luxmoore Author: Young People, Death and the Unfairness of Everything. "An extraordinary story, brilliantly told. Blake saw the world in a grain of sand; Bethell finds it in his quest to know his brother".Sandy Balfour. Author: Vulnerable in Hearts. "Everyone who knows of a suicide will find themselves better equipped this remarkably courageous, honest and restorative book" Alison Cobb.
About the Author
After a year teaching at a Canadian boarding school, Andrew spent the next seventeen in Inner London comprehensives, where he helped pioneer media studies as a curriculum subject, wrote and produced plays for young people and was a member of the editorial collective that produced Teaching London Kids, a radical magazine which challenged the educational orthodoxies of the Seventies. He wrote and edited a series of play-scripts and a series of media studies textbooks for Cambridge University Press. His stage adaptation of Gregory's Girl sold 200,000 copies and was performed around the world.
At the age of forty he set up Double Exposure, a television production company through which he produced his first film, The Stranger at the Gate, in which he and his father retraced his wartime escape and 500 mile walk across Italy for BBC2. The company went on to make a wide range of documentaries and educational series, many of which won awards and large audiences in the UK and US. In 1997 he won the BAFTA for best documentary series for The House, a six-part series that went behind the scenes at the Royal Opera House to much acclaim and controversy.
In 2004 he led a consortium which won the contract from the government to set up and run a dedicated digital channel for teachers and parents. He was the CEO and Creative Director of Teachers TV, a unique venture that for seven years won the hearts and minds of the profession and attracted a significant audience of parents. It was widely admired around the world, which did not stop a Conservative secretary of state closing it down just as the Bill Gates Foundation decided to fund a similar enterprise in the US. IN 2011 Andrew went to San Francisco to set up Teaching Channel, which runs to this day
Andrew is now chair of governors at two London primary schools and a National Lead Governor. He lives in Hackney with his partner of forty five years, has three children and three grandchildren. He paints portraits in his East London studio.
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