John Niven (15:30 BST)

In 2010 John Niven’s brother Gary tried to kill himself at the age of 42 after years of chaotic struggle against the world. He was in an induced coma in the intensive care unit at Crosshouse hospital in Kilmarnock, from which he never woke up. O Brother tells the story of the next few days and the 40-odd years that led to this moment.

Niven, author and screenwriter, himself no stranger to some of the self-destructive urges that bedevilled his brother, is well-known for his fiction, but his award-winning memoir, by turns heart-breaking and uproariously funny, evokes a working-class childhood of the 1970s and 80s in Irvine, a time when his little brother Gary was fearless, popular, stubborn, handsome, funny and sometimes terrifying, as it tries to answer the questions of guilt, culpability and regret that often haunt the survivors of suicide.

Niven’s other best-selling books include Kill your Friends, The Second Coming, and Straight White Male.

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