Face to Face by Nick Dawson: Sneak Peek

Posted on 2025/07/03 , tagged as Face to Face, Nick Dawson, Non-fiction

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Face to Face: Finding Justice for My Murdered Twin Brother by Nick Dawson Sneak Peek

‘Face to Face is a brave endeavour to answer our culture of dehumanization with a story that ultimately rehumanizes at every level. Essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand the power and impact of restorative justice.’

Marina Cantacuzino, author of Forgiveness: An Exploration and founder of The Forgiveness Project

When his identical twin brother Simon was kicked to death, all Nick Dawson felt for the killers was hatred.

Struggling in a world where his mirror image had vanished, he came to realise there was only one way to stop the torture – acceptance. Travelling to the absolute limits of personal darkness, Nick came face to face with one of his brother’s killers.

Now a champion of restorative justice, Nick heads behind bars, asking hardened criminals to change, to think of their victims, to make amends.

In Face to Face he takes us with him on a journey into this hidden and unpredictable world.

Better understand the devastating impact of sibling loss and the reality of restorative justice with the extract below from the prologue of Nick and Simon’s story.

For a long time, I thought this story had only one end. My twin brother gone, and me left wandering a desert of sorrow, anger and despair.

Simon was my identical twin. We looked the same, sounded the same, moved the same. When we looked in a mirror, I looked at him and he looked at me. And then one day the mirror shattered. Simon was murdered. He was beaten, robbed and thrown in a pond to drown. The reflection in the mirror was gone. Instead all I saw was brutality and ugliness.

When the world turns grey, colour becomes impossible to imagine, as if it never existed. Over time, as you rebuild, a few faint pastel shades start to appear, and then something a little more vivid. The palette slowly returns. Eventually, you can paint a picture. Actually, two pictures. One of what you lost, and one of what you have now. And that is what I am doing here, honestly, accurately and with Simon at their centre. In both these paintings Simon is alive. That’s how he feels to me, and, by telling you about him here, that’s how I want him to feel to you. I refuse to portray my beautiful twin brother in charcoal shades when to everyone he met he was, and is, a rainbow.

I’ll be honest. There have been times when my view of that rainbow has been obscured. That’s what happens when you look at life through a cloud of hatred and rage. It took me a while to understand that to find something resembling inner peace I might need to open my mind to a different way of thinking. That realisation came in the most unlikely of settings. I wasn’t on a psychiatrist’s sofa, or meditating in a mountain hideaway; I was in a prison sitting opposite Craig, one of Simon’s murderers.

From the exact moment of Simon’s death, Craig and I had both been travelling our own very different paths. Initially, they had diverged wildly. I was a lone twin. He was a killer. But we did have one thing in common. We were both serving life sentences. And it was that which would eventually create a desire in us both for our paths to cross.

Restorative justice, the idea that both the perpetrator of a crime and a victim can benefit from meeting one another, was the medium that would bring us together. It was a remarkable transformation. For many years, the only reason I wanted to be near to Craig was to kill him. Now we were sitting a matter of a few feet from one another, talking. Together, we unpacked the horrific events that led to Simon’s death. I revealed the long-lasting and catastrophic effects of the murder. He talked about his own life and how, on release, he hoped, in some small way, to

try to make amends. If you think this was a moment of great personal liberation for me, celebration even, you’d be wrong. It could never have been that. The meeting was incredibly hard. There were times when I believed myself to be incredibly disloyal. I felt Simon looking down from above, wondering how I could possibly talk to his murderer. But at the same time, I knew Craig was no longer the evil monster I remembered from court sixteen years previously. A second chance wasn’t undeserved.

Since that time, as an advocate of restorative justice, I have spent many hours in UK prisons. I have met hundreds of criminals, many of them violent, despicably so. I have looked them in the eye and told them my story – Simon’s story – in the hope that they, too, will understand the impact of their crimes. Hopefully, they will go on to live a different kind of life. Perhaps even consider restorative justice themselves. More recently I have even become a prison visitor, a voluntary role ensuring that the conditions inmates live in are decent and that they receive the help they need. I totally understand how this appears to run completely counter to my experience. As someone who lost his twin to the most awful of crimes, why would I ever want to help those who so disrespect civilised society? But if we don’t step onto the other side of the tracks, how can we ever hope to understand those who dwell there? How can we help them not to make the same mistakes again and again? How can we stop other people hurting like I am? Prisoners are, like it or not, human beings like the rest of us.

There is, though, one thing I’d like to make clear. Forgiveness is a line I have yet fully to cross. Where Simon was once my companion, now I have emptiness. And I am far from alone. My family have all suffered intensely down the years, not only through the pain of loss, but through breakdown and mental illness. For all of us, demons lurk around every corner.

It doesn’t stop there. In the course of writing this book, I vowed to explore just how far the ripples of Simon’s murder extend. To hear the stories of Simon’s friends, their lives turned upside down, their guilt, their disintegration, has been as upsetting as it’s been illuminating. Those ripples will, sadly, continue for many decades, potentially on through the generations –something I have seen with my own children. More positively, meeting so many incredible people who knew and loved Simon has also filled me up, in a way that for so long seemed unimaginable. While sometimes difficult to hear, their words have allowed me to better understand the person he was when he died. Lack of information is a torture for those who lose loved ones in tragic situations. Death is a jigsaw thrown on the floor. I thank them sincerely for helping me rebuild my brother’s life. I needed to touch him, feel him, capture the memories before it’s too late.

Whatever the circumstances of someone’s passing, it’s incumbent on those left behind to ensure they’re remembered. In the weeks following Simon’s death, I found a letter I wrote to Mum and Dad. Looking at it now reminds me why I have written this book. ‘Maintaining Simon’s memory is the most important thing,’ I tell them. And it’s true.

There was something else I wanted my parents to know – ‘Simon’s heart and soul lives on in me.’ As Simon’s identical twin, I’ve always felt I speak for him. His voice was taken away in such a cruel and heartless way. This book is a way not just for me, but for Simon to tell his story. For Simon to be heard. For Simon to be at peace.

 Simon is dead. He was murdered by two attackers in the early hours of 29 August 1998. But he lives on in me. And now he lives on in this book.

Face to face again. At last.

Bookshop.org – Order your copy

Face to Face: Finding Justice For my Murdered Twin Brother by Nick Dawson is out now.