'Cherie should be ashamed of herself for using David Kelly's suicide to sell her memoirs', say dead scientist's furious family

Until now, the Kellys have maintained a dignified silence over the death of the weapons expert, who was outed as the source of a story claiming the government "sexed up" an intelligence document in the run-up to the Iraq war.

But yesterday Derek Vawdrey - brother of Dr Kelly's widow Janice - spoke out after Mrs Blair used her account of the tragedy to bolster her description of her husband as a "good man" with "pure motives".

Mr Vawdrey was so incensed that he pinned the blame for the academic's death directly on the actions of Tony Blair and his advisers.

He said that "Dai" - the family's name for Dr Kelly - "was badly used then, and he's being badly used now".

He added: "Cherie Blair should be ashamed of herself. It's somehow so typical of the Blairs to make use of Dai's death to show the world what a wonderful man Tony Blair is.

"So far as I'm concerned my brother-in-law's death was caused by what went on at Number 10 and what they said about him."

The most sensational parts of Mrs Blair's book, Speaking For Myself - published by Little, Brown - are being serialised this week in The Times and The Sun to drum up sales when it goes on sale on Thursday. The memoirs are expected to earn her £1million.

In the book, Mrs Blair recalls the aftermath of Dr Kelly's death, describing how the news broke while the Blairs were on an official visit to the Far East.

"I have never seen Tony so distraught and I felt helpless to do anything," she writes.

"In the 25 years since I had known Tony I had never seen him so badly affected."

She adds: "At the Tokyo press conference a journalist shouted at my husband: 'What's it like, Mr Blair, to have blood on your hands?'"

Then, on a stopover in Beijing the Blairs viewed an installation of terracotta statues.

"There is a photograph of the two of us taken that morning that I keep in my study. Tony crouching among these thousands of tiny figures, me behind him, my arms around him, giving him the support he needed. 'You're a good man,' I told him as we were crouched there, the cameras whirring.

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Driven to suicide: David Kelly (peft) and Janice Kelly, his widow

"'And God knows your motives are pure, even if the consequences are not as you had hoped'. And it's true, Tony knew David Kelly was a loyal public servant driven to despair because of all the furore."

Within hours, Mrs Blair was singing the Beatles hit When I'm Sixty-Four to a group of students.

She states in the book: "Although only a sixday tour, Tony seemed to age ten years and the stress was written on his face. Back in London Alastair (Campbell) was going to pieces and Tony spent half the time on the phone trying to calm him down: Physically and emotionally he was exhausted."

As a "postscript" she reveals that the Blairs invited Mrs Kelly and her children to their country residence, Chequers, because "we wanted to say personally how very sorry we were".

But Mr Vawdrey told the Mail: "It's a bit late for Cherie Blair to write that her husband 'knew that David Kelly was a loyal public servant driven to despair because of the furore'. Where else was the furore created but in her husband's office, with all that wicked nonsense being fed to the media that Dai was a Walter Mitty character and so on?"

Dr Kelly's death happened after days of fevered Government briefing over the source of a bombshell BBC report in 2003 claiming ministers had 'sexed up' a dossier on Iraq's weapons capability.

After being publicly unmasked, Dr Kelly - a quiet and peaceful academic who lived in Oxfordshire - was forced into the eye of a political storm.

The strain caused him to take his own life and his body was found in woodland near his home.

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Mrs Kelly's MP, the Tory Ed Vaizey, said: "It is up to Cherie Blair to decide whether or not it is appropriate to write about this.

"I would note that Jan Kelly has never talked about this publicly and even privately has maintained her complete silence on the matter.

"I suspect she would prefer it if people didn't talk about it."

Mrs Kelly has spoken about her husband's death only when giving evidence to the Hutton Inquiry.

She issued a statement shortly after his body was found on behalf of herself and the couple's daughters Sian, 32, and twins Rachel and Ellen, 30, saying that events made Dr Kelly's life "intolerable".