Jonathan Barrow

‘Tragic early deaths, even double deaths, are alas not rare, but Jonathan’s case is stranger than most. Days, even hours, before he and Anita Fielding crashed into another car at Olney in Buckinghamshire, my brother had finished writing a short novel in which accidents, especially head-on collisions, feature often and in which he had predicted and described his own sudden, violent death in excruciating, semi-comic detail.’

Over four pages in today’s Telegraph magazine Andrew Barrow remembers his brother Jonathan, who died aged 22, along with his girlfriend, in 1970. Jonathan, a ‘genuine dunce’ at school, had worked in hotels, then in advertising; he had published stories in the London Magazine and exhibited drawings at the Redfern Gallery. Andrew’s piece coincides with the publication of Animal Magic (Jonathan Cape), his memoir of his brother. The short novel referred to above, titled The Queue, will be published by CBe in May.