One brother became a bricklayer, the other a novelist of international repute. For decades neither knew of the other’s existence until Ian McEwan met the sibling given away as an illegitimate child at a railway station in 1942.

At their first encounter in a pub near Oxford, his brother’s tale of wartime heartbreak and diverging lives had the award winning author spellbound.

David Sharp was the illegitimate son of Rose Wort, who became pregnant during an affair with a soldier while her husband, Ernest, was away at war.

In desperation, she gave the baby away weeks before her husband was due home on leave.

The bittersweet story was revealed this week when Mr. Sharp gave an interview to his local paper, the Oxford Mail.

In it, he told of how his mother placed an ad in the Reading Mercury. “Wanted, home for baby boy, aged 1 month; complete surrender. Write Box 173, Mercury, Reading,” it read.

Then she gave the baby to a childless couple, Rose and Percy Sharp, at Reading station and returned to her family, telling only her sister what she had done.

Source: National Post