Dear John

In July 1973, at the age of 21, Mark Constantine OBE started making herbal hair products while studying to become a trichologist. Over 50 years later he still works out of his first hair and beauty clinic on Poole High Street, although today as the CEO and Co-Founder of LUSH. 

DEAR JOHN tells the story of how a headstrong young man went from earning £20 a week treating hair and scalp conditions with homemade remedies, to becoming the biggest product supplier to The Body Shop. From his failed mail-order business Cosmetics To Go to co-founding LUSH, this book will take readers on a journey through Mark’s life in business. 

However, long before all this unfolded two boys growing up in the seaside resort of Weymouth began a 60-year friendship where one was the hare (Mark) and one was the tortoise (Jeff). Mark had been abandoned by his father as a baby and he had spent his life trying to impress a man who had disappeared in Kenya in 1954. For Mark’s sixtieth birthday, his lifelong friend presented him with his lost family history. Jeff had spent nine months secretly tracing the Constantine family tree, looking for information that might uncover the whereabouts of Mark’s father and whether he was still alive. This journey reached an epic climax in 2012, which spurred the hare to run even harder than before. From the sleepy Dorset coast to a nuclear facility in South Africa, friendships will be forged, perfume made and the past uncovered.

Another decade has passed and the tortoise has finally caught up again, and is the author of this expanded second edition of Dear John with three new chapters, bringing the often controversial life of Mark Constantine OBE and story of LUSH right up to date.