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  • Published: 1 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529151855
  • Imprint: Hutchinson Heinemann
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $40.00

Looking After

A Portrait of My Autistic Brother





From the author of Also Human comes a moving memoir about how autism shapes our relationships and what it means to be fufilled

Meet Lionel. Fourteen years Caroline's senior, Lionel was born at a time when no-one knew what autism was, nor how to study or treat it. Terrifyingly, most autistic children were therefore institutionalised and often died of neglect in their thirties or forties.

You've probably walked past men like Lionel in the street - men who look a bit dishevelled, shuffling around in ill-fitting shoes and food-stained trousers, talking to themselves. Men who laugh at a joke going on in their own head, but don't share it with anybody else. Perhaps you've wondered what their childhood was like, whether they had friends, or how they managed to look after themselves, day to day?

Thank You For Having Me will tell the story of one such man. An extraordinary man whose life was certainly unusual, but never dull.

  • Published: 1 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529151855
  • Imprint: Hutchinson Heinemann
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $40.00

About the author

Caroline Elton

Caroline Elton is an occupational psychologist who has spent the last twenty years training and supporting doctors. She received her PhD from University College London's School of Medicine and set up and led the Careers Unit supporting doctors in over seventy hospitals across London.

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Praise for Looking After

A beautiful, bracing gem of a book, quite unlike any other family memoir I’ve ever read. Candid and tender in equal measure, incredibly moving but also lucid and life affirming, this is such an important book about familial love, about where and how it meets the imperfect world outside. Gripping too. Even though technically one knows from the outset what is going to happen, I found it hard to put down. By the closing pages, I felt I had grown to love Lionel too and that I would never forget him. Looking After is a triumph.

Polly Morland, author of A FORTUNATE WOMAN

Beautifully written, erudite and important, Dr Caroline Elton writes as a psychologist second, sister first - which is exactly right. Looking After is a love letter to an autistic brother and to family itself, and a reminder of the power of empathy to save lives.

Christie Watson, author of MORAL INJURIES

A sister’s loving tribute and a powerful call for compassionate change

Leah Hazard, author of HARD PUSHED

A book that deserves a wide readership. Lionel’s story sucked me in straight away, and held me captive to the very last page. Wise, compassionate and compellingly told

Monica Ali