Shortlisted for: Costa Biography Award

On a cold February day two months after his 20th birthday, Henry Cockburn waded into the freezing water of Newhaven estuary outside Brighton and tried to swim across, almost drowning in the process.

Voices, he said, had told him to do it. Nearly halfway around the world in Afghanistan, journalist Patrick Cockburn learned that his son had been admitted to a hospital mental ward. Ten days later, Henry was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

Thus begins Patrick and HenryÂ’s extraordinary account of HenryÂ’s rapid descent into mental illness and of PatrickÂ’s journey towards understanding the changes in his son.