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Abandoned as a tiny baby and discouraged from asking questions by his adoptive family, Dave Sharp did not try to track down his biological family until he entered his sixties.

He was to discover that  he was the brother of best-selling novelist Ian McEwan.

Dave Sharp as a toddler.

Builder and Reading FC fan Dave told BBC Radio Berkshire's Sarah Walker his amazing story.

He began with his adoption in 1942 by strangers who had answered an advert in the local paper for a baby boy.

"My biological parents hit upon a unique way of disposing of me." he said: "They put an advert in the newspaper with a box office number. There were a number of other replies, but the Sharps were the first to write in."

Rose Wort - Dave's biological mother.

In December 1942, Dave Sharp's biological mother Rose Wort, and her younger sister made their way from Aldershot down to Reading Station. The young woman waited on the platform, her child in her arms. As the passengers on the platform dispersed, just one couple were left.

She handed over the baby to them and left after just a few minutes. Rose was not to make contact with her child for the next 60 years.

Dave was oblivious to the fact he was adopted until the age of 14, when his parents decided to tell him the truth.

"I was playing football outside, and my father called me in." he said.

"There was an atmosphere you could cut with a knife, and my dad said: "Dave we've got something to tell you. We both love you very much but you're not our son.'

"My mother started crying and ran across the room, she was absolutely sobbing, and she said: 'You won't turn against us will you?' and I said 'Of course not'. And then we never spoke of it again."

Percy Sharp, and Sergeant David McEwan.

"I buried it away.

"One day I said to my dad 'Where did you get me from?' and he said 'We got you out of a newspaper.

"We got you out of an ad in the Reading Mercury'."

Dave went down to his local library and looked through the archives to find the advert which had been placed by his parents, but it wasn't until he became a grandfather that he began to look for his biological parents in earnest.

He decided to ask the Salvation Army Family Tracing service to find his relatives. Dave was warned that it could take many years to find his family, and they might not be pleased to hear from them.

But the revelation soon came that he had two brothers and a sister, and they had asked him to write to them through the Red Cross.

Ian McEwan with Dave Sharp.

It was not long before Dave heard from novelist Ian McEwan, and learned he was his biological brother.

"After they'd given me away, my mother's first husband was killed in the war, which left my biological parents free to marry, and they had a son -  Ian." Dave explained. "So you could say Ian was born one side of the sheets and I was born the other.

"One day, a letter came through the letterbox, I opened the envelope and a photo slid out. It made the hairs on my neck stand up, because it looked just like me. Incredibly Ian lived just 10 miles away from me.

"I rang him and I said "I'm your brother'."

The pair have since met, an experience Dave describes as 'incredible', but although his biological mother was still alive, she was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease and was unable to remember the events of the past.

Now Dave has written a book about his own experiences called Complete Surrender.

Dave said: "I suggested to my brother that my experiences would make a good story, and he replied, 'no it's your story, you write it'. "