Dear John: The life story of Mark Constantine CEO co-founder of LUSH

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 in Poole High Street, although today as the head of the global cosmetics retailer LUSH.

Dear John tells the rags-to-riches story of how a headstrong young man went from earning £20 a week treating hair and scalp conditions with homemade remedies, to becoming the major product inventor for the Body Shop. In 1988 he started, and later crashed, the mail-order company Cosmetics To Go, before rising from the ashes in 1995 and co-founding LUSH, the fresh, handmade cosmetics brand operating over 850 shops in over 50 countries.

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 and the other the tortoise. That journey reached an epic climax in South Africa in 2012, which spurred the hare to run even harder than before.

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