NATALIE CLARKE: Agony of star writer Julie Burchill as the son she lost custody of takes his own life 

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Tragic loss: Jack Landesman as a child, pictured in 1990. He has committed suicide aged just 29

She once described him as her Achilles’ heel — the one person capable of hurting her because she loved him so much.

This week writer Julie Burchill felt the full force of that hurt when her son, Jack, committed suicide aged just 29.

Ms Burchill 55, announced the news on her Facebook page yesterday in an emotional tribute in which she blamed herself for failing him.

‘My beloved son Jack Landesman killed himself earlier this week,’ she wrote. ‘He is at peace now and in pain no longer and of course I don’t believe that life ends with death, so I’m lucky.

‘Look after the people you love, as I tried to and failed. Thank you for all your good wishes and offers of support, but I have my Dan (her husband Daniel Raven) who was a wonderful stepfather to my poor boy for more than half of his life.

‘The love of my friends is a wonderful source of fun in my life, but excuse me if I don’t need it right now.’

Ms Burchill did not say how her son died, or give details about the circumstances leading up to his death.

Her reference to her belief that life does not end when someone dies is a reference to the Christian faith she embraced 15 years ago and is now turning to for strength.

But today, Julie Burchill, the columnist with the razor-sharp pen who has always appeared to be such a strong and resilient character, is shattered with grief.

Yesterday, a friend said that Jack had suffered on and off from depression in adulthood.

‘He sort of went off the rails as a teenager and never managed to get things back on track,’ said the friend. ‘He was a lovely boy; it is so very sad.’

Jack Landesman was Burchill’s son from her second marriage, to the American-born writer Cosmo Landesman, now 60.

She lost custody of the boy when he was eight after she left Mr Landesman, having started an affair in 1995 with Charlotte Raven, an intern on Modern Review, the magazine she had founded with her husband and the journalist Toby Young.

Christian faith: Julie Burchill, the columnist with the razor-sharp pen who has always appeared to be such a strong and resilient character, is shattered with grief

The affair lasted a matter of months but cost Ms Burchill dear — she blamed her unconventional relationship for the court’s decision to award custody to her ex-husband.

‘All I am going to say is that the day I lost custody of Jack was the saddest day of my life,’ she said later.

But he was to come back into her life, and Miss Burchill said recently that Jack had been living with her ‘more or less’ since he was 16.

Ms Burchill’s intense maternal feeling for Jack was in contrast to her self-confessed lack of emotion towards her elder son, Robert, from her first marriage, to author Tony Parsons. She is estranged from Robert, whom she hasn’t seen since he came to live with her briefly as a teenager.

‘I didn’t get on with him,’ she once said. ‘When I last saw him, he got on my nerves so much I thought: “I never want to see you again”.’

It is as though all the maternal love she ought to have felt for Robert, but couldn’t, was poured on to Jack — and so he received a mother’s love twice over.

Ms Burchill had married Parsons in 1979, at the age of 18, after meeting him when they worked on the music magazine NME.

Robert was born the following year but the marriage soon fell into trouble, and Ms Burchill walked out on both her husband and four-year-old son after meeting Cosmo Landesman, whom she later married.

In a typically frank interview on Desert Island Discs in February 2013, Ms Burchill, who had a working-class upbringing in Bristol, admitted she was ‘selfish and reckless’ to leave Robert behind when she left Parsons.

Bass guitar player: Jack had suffered on and off from depression in adulthood, according to a friend

‘I could have done it better, but I’m not sorry I left that marriage,’ she said. ‘I was going off with my lover, I had no money and nowhere to stay.

‘I figured it was best to leave him where he was and go back for him, but I never went back.’

Jack was born in April 1986 and for a time the family was happy.

Julie was at the height of her fame and power as a writer — she could be offensive and outrageous, but always with wit and style. Her private life was wild and she has admitted taking cocaine, but she was always there for her younger son.

The family friend remembers Jack at that time as a lovely boy who seemed to be full of life.

‘He was always so jolly and had charming manners,’ says the friend. ‘He was one of those children you think: “They’re going to be a real star when they grow up.”

‘But I think his parents’ divorce all had its effect, and he became troubled as a teenager.’

The stability that Jack had known in his early life was torn away in 1995 when Ms Burchill began a relationship with Miss Raven.

Ms Burchill has since said many times that although she intended to leave Mr Landesman, she wanted to keep Jack with her. The warring couple fought over him in the courts — and Jack’s father won.

‘Cosmo said I had affairs with both men and women, when the only affair I’d had was with Charlotte,’ she said afterwards. ‘He’s been a great dad but [the whole thing] was very shoddy towards Jack.’

Mr Landesman was trying to do right by his son, but himself admitted in an article he wrote four years after winning custody that Jack had suffered badly.

He also spoke of his own struggle to become the replacement for the irreplaceable — the mum Jack had lost.

‘I felt jealous of her and a bit of an outsider in my own home,’ Mr Landesman wrote of the early years when he and Julie were still together.

‘She was brilliant with Jack. No matter how much she drank the night before, she would be up to make sure he had breakfast and was ready for me to take him to school.

'My beloved son': Ms Burchill 55, announced the news on her Facebook page yesterday in an emotional tribute in which she blamed herself for failing him 

‘It wasn’t easy being a dad with a mum like that. Then she left me.’

To help Jack adjust to the painful reality of day-to-day life without his mother, Cosmo would try to be the ‘superdad of my dreams’ — teach him to cook, teach him to zap space monsters in computer games.

‘But first I had to explain to Jack that his mother wouldn’t be living with us any more. He would visit her on weekends.

He told his son: ‘Think of this as a new, fun way of life. You’ll have two homes, and you and me will have the chance to get close and spend time together.’

But eight-year-old Jack just wanted to have his mum back.

‘Within two weeks of her departure, Jack’s brave little face began to show the signs of the strain,’ Mr Landesman wrote. ‘He acquired a series of nervous tics and twitches. His eyes would blink rapidly while he’d flick his head back and forth and side to side like someone with brain damage.

Jack was Julie Burchill’s son from her second marriage, to the American-born writer Cosmo Landesman (pictured), now 60

‘He would gnaw on his lips and sigh. One day I said to him: “Jack, I think we need to talk. Is everything all right?”

‘“Yeah, Dad, everything is fine,” he said, looking down at his food. But I could tell he was going through hell.

‘Eventually, he said to me: “Dad, I don’t like this new life of ours.”’

His father responded: ‘I know you miss your mum and things around here are far from perfect. But let’s give it a chance. Things will get better, wait and see.’

‘I looked at him and I saw a little boy with a mop of blond hair, his eyes blinking like mad, his head jerking left and right.

‘Jack put on this sad imitation of a smile and said: “OK, Dad, let’s give our new life a go. I know it will be great.”

‘And then he raised his little thumb at me.’

Mr Landesman, choked at his son’s gesture, ran from the room and broke down in tears. Jack followed him into the hallway and started crying, too. ‘He came and stood by me, not knowing what to do,’ recalled Mr Landesman.

It was Jack who saved the situation. ‘I’ve got some really bad news for you,’ he told his father. ‘Your pie is burning — I can smell it.’

The apple pie was salvaged. They laughed. Things got better — but Jack’s mother was, very much against her own wishes, a part-time figure in his life. Losing custody of Jack did not have the effect of making Ms Burchill rethink her relationship with her elder son, Robert.

She hadn’t seen him for ten years, after walking out on him and Tony Parsons, but they were to be reunited by chance in 1997 after Robert paid a visit to his half-brother, Jack, and saw his mother.

Robert was later to recall that after that meeting, his mother sent a letter inviting him to stay. He moved in for a while, but was then informed by his mother that he wasn’t welcome at weekends. This was followed by another letter asking him to move out altogether.

As controversial as ever, in 2004 Ms Burchill married Daniel Raven, 13 years her junior, who happens to be the brother of her former lover, Charlotte.

Former couple: Ms Burchill’s intense maternal feeling for Jack was in contrast to her self-confessed lack of emotion towards her elder son, Robert, from her first marriage, to author Tony Parsons (together in 1977) 

The set-up was unconventional to say the least, with husband and wife living in separate houses down the road from each other in Brighton.

But against expectation, the marriage has been a success and around the time of the wedding, Jack moved back home — much to his mother’s joy.

Professionally, Burchill was excelling, too. In 2004, she wrote Sugar Rush — a tale of teenage lesbian love — which was followed by a successful television series.

In 2008, she wrote Not In My Name — A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy.

Another major change was that, a few years before Jack came back into her life, Ms Burchill had become a Christian.

She lost custody of the boy when he was eight

She says she found God after being ‘saved’ by the Chaplain of Sussex University, Gavin Ashenden, who invited her to his church after reading one of her columns.

She began doing volunteer work at a centre for the mentally handicapped and with elderly people at the local RNIB home.

‘I play shuffleboard with them and take them out on the bus,’ she told an interviewer.

But for reasons that are perhaps buried deep inside her, Ms Burchill apparently couldn’t find it within herself to be reconciled with Robert, although the friend suggests that in recent years it is Robert who hasn’t been so keen to see his mother.

In 2008, she said of him: ‘I’ve got no interest in seeing my first son, and I’m sure he has no interest in seeing me.

‘Some people just don’t take to each other. I’m not going to lie about it. I’d rather be a monster than a hypocrite.’

In another interview, she spoke about both Robert and Jack.

‘In many people’s eyes, what I’ve done has been a horrible way for a person to behave but I haven’t had a single moment of regret. Every time I’ve left a family, I’ve gone on to be much happier.

‘I have two sons, one I don’t see and one who lives with me, for my sins. That’s Jack, who’s 22. He’s the apple of my eye, my Achilles’ heel.’

It has been reported that Jack was a bass guitarist in a band, whose members included his uncle, Miles Davies Landesman. Little else is known about him.

Now the worst that can happen has happened. Yesterday, Ms Burchill posted a poem by William Blake in tribute to her younger son.

‘The little boy lost in the lonely fen, Led by the wandering light, Began to cry, but God ever nigh, Appeared like his father, in white.

‘He kissed the child, and by the hand led, and to his mother brought, Who in sorrow pale, through the lonely dale, The little boy weeping sought.’

For confidential support, call the Samaritans on 08457 909 090 or go to samaritans.org