Complete Surrender

In the late 1942 a brief advert was placed in the Reading Mercury, a newspaper for the local area, reading: 'WANTED HOME FOR BABY BOY, AGE 1 MONTH; COMPLETE SURRENDER'. Two weeks later, on the deserted platform of Reading railway station, a young couple who read the advert were to take the baby home. The boy, Dave Sharp, grew up happily with his replacement parents, the light of their eyes, never knowing the full story of his parentage. A chance discovery some sixty years later was to set him on a quest to uncover the truth behind his mysterious adandonment. Not only was Dave to be united with the brother that he never had, world-famous novelist Ian McEwan, but the two men were to discover a shared history and relationship closer than they could have ever imagined. With a foreword by Ian McEwan, this book tells the moving story of Dave's search for the family that had given him up and the astonishing secrets that lay behind his biological parents 'complete surrender' of him.

Dave Sharp, a bricklayer by trade, lives in south Oxfordshire and is a lifelong supporter of his beloved Reading Football Club.