McEwan's Fiction Doesn't Trump His True-Life Tale

British Novelist Learns a Nearby Bricklayer Is His Older Brother

Ian McEwan, who has written about deep family secrets and complicated relationships in his fiction, learned that his mother gave up his newborn older brother for adoption at a British train station in 1942. (By Toby Melville -- Associated Press)

LONDON, Jan. 17 -- A bricklayer and one of the world's most acclaimed novelists lived within 20 miles of each other for decades, never knowing they were brothers.

Their story, the talk of London this week, started in 1942 when Rose Wort walked into an English train station and gave away her newborn baby.

While her husband was away fighting in World War II, she had an affair that produced a little boy. In secrecy and desperation, she placed a newspaper ad: "Wanted, home for baby boy, age one month: complete surrender." She handed the infant to the couple who answered the ad and walked away.

After her husband was killed in the war, she married her lover in 1947. The next year they had a second son: Ian McEwan, who grew up to be one of Britain's premier authors, a winner of the prestigious Booker Prize who received a Commander of the British Empire honor from Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.

For many years, McEwan and his lost brother, a bricklayer named David Sharp, each lived near Oxford without knowing the other existed, according to the Oxford Mail, the newspaper that first reported the story.

The two brothers were reunited about five years ago, meeting in a hotel bar in Oxford after Sharp, now 64, decided to finally track down the details of the mother who had given him away. McEwan publicly acknowledged the story this week.

"It was a great surprise and pleasure to discover that I had another brother," McEwan, 58, said in a statement issued through his agent. Neither he nor Sharp could be reached for comment. "We welcomed him and his family into ours and we keep in touch. We attended his daughter's wedding last year. I am sad that he never got the chance to know our parents."

According to newspaper accounts confirmed by a friend of McEwan's, who asked not to be identified, Sharp was raised by parents who told him when he was 14 that he was not their biological child.

He wasn't given all the details, but his adoptive father eventually mentioned that they had gotten him "out of a newspaper." After his father died, Sharp found a copy of the advertisement, but he put the matter "on the back burner" for decades.

Finally, when he turned 60, he decided he had to unearth his personal history.

Sharp found his birth mother, now named Rose McEwan, by writing to the Salvation Army's Family Tracing Service. The service helped him track her down, but she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease and was unable to answer his questions. She died in 2003.

Rose McEwan remained virtually silent for the rest of her life about what she had done. She had told only her sister about the baby she gave away, and the sister told no one until Sharp contacted the family. When he finally appeared, she told him the whole tale about how his mother came to hand him over to a childless couple at the Reading train station.

"My mother swore her to secrecy on the way home on the train, and she never breathed a word," Sharp told the Oxford Mail. "She felt very guilty for telling me and betraying the trust, but also for conspiring against me."

The two brothers were both raised in fairly modest English homes, but McEwan was the far more accomplished student, earning a college degree and then embarking on a literary career. His novel "Amsterdam" won the Booker Prize in 1998, and he has received worldwide praise for such lavishly detailed novels as "Enduring Love" and "Saturday." "Atonement" and "The Comfort of Strangers" were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and "Atonement" is being made into a film starring British actress Keira Knightley.

McEwan has also won awards in the United States and Europe. On Wednesday he was in California, where he was to deliver a lecture at Stanford University.

Sharp is a "brickie," as masons are known here, who has lived a modest, blue-collar life and had never heard of McEwan or his books until they met. He said his first hint about his brother's fame came when autograph hunters interrupted their first meeting.

"Of course, I've read all his books now," Sharp told the Oxford Mail. "But whether he's a road-sweeper or an author is immaterial. He's just my brother to me."

Sharp is writing a book about his experience, called "Complete Surrender," echoing the ad his mother placed in the newspaper six decades ago.

Asked why he didn't leave the writing to his famous author brother, Sharp told the newspaper, "I did suggest it, but he said it was my story and that therefore I should tell it."