In 1961, Paul Arnott, then known as Rory Brennan, was born to an Irish couple in London who had married some months after he was conceived. Such was the religious and social pressure at the time that the couple did not feel they could return to Ireland with their first-born. They gave him up for adoption and came back to settle in Dublin. Later, they had four more children, but they never forgot about their first child.

It was only after Arnott married and had children of his own that he became curious about his natural parents. When a friend pointed out at a party how closely his small son resembled him, it set Arnott thinking that he himself must physically resemble the natural family he had never seen. From this thought stemmed his efforts to uncover the trail leading back to his adoption.

Arnott did manage to find his natural family, and has since written a book about the search, published this month and called A Good Likeness: a Personal Story of Adoption. The book is an interesting contribution to the body of work about adoption, revealing much about both its author and the bureaucracy he dealt with. He highlights, for example, the fact that natural parents in Britain do not have access to adoption records. If a mother wants to trace a child long given up for adoption, she must wait until the child attempts to contact her. And she may die waiting. Under Irish law, contact is possible from both sides.

Arnott's story also has a fresh perspective, that of the adoptee who finds out that his natural family are from another country, where certain elements of the culture are very different. Arnott is candid about his responses to Ireland, a country with which he had little previous familiarity. Once he had made contact with his family here, five years ago, he spent time travelling in Ireland, trying to establish the same connection with the country as he had done with his warm and welcoming flesh and blood.

Despite his efforts, Arnott did not like much of what he saw of Ireland. His observations about our unlovely urban sprawl, our roads and less attractive manners, are often refreshing and endearingly unsentimental.

Sadly, his adoptive parents took the news of his search for his natural parents badly. His adoptive father died before being reconciled to him, although his adoptive mother has since become close to his family again. Arnott, who has four children of his own and has worked both in print and as a TV producer, still lives in London, from where he spoke to this reporter by phone.

Unfortunately, the interview did not start well. Arnott's natural siblings and parents, Ann and Michael Brennan, are named throughout the book, as is the area in which they now live, and there are long passages about Michael Brennan's past work as a prominent trade union activist. Hence a predictable first question: what does your family think about you writing the book?

"I've decided not to tell any Irish journalist the name of my parents, so I won't discuss that question," was Arnott's astonishing reply. Astonishing, since the names are all there in the book anyway. There was, in fact, not much that Arnott did want to discuss, which was a pity. This would suggest that his book, described in its title as "a personal story", feels so personal that it is difficult for Arnott to accept that it is now in the public domain.

Unquestionably, it is the story that carries the book, and not the writing, which is cliched, flat and often offensive in its clumsy use of language. Why, for instance, I asked him, had he written the following sentence, in which he records his first meeting with one of his natural brothers? "I would have welcomed inbreds from a Kerry farmyard, but having siblings with fine minds was another unsought bonus."

"Well," came the heated reply, "the point is, it wouldn't have mattered if they were inbreds from Germany, I would still have written the same thing. Are you calling me a racist?"

A Good Likeness: a Personal Story of Adoption, by Paul Arnott, is published by Little Brown, priced £15.99 in UK