Cherie Blair should be "ashamed of herself" for dredging up David Kelly's suicide while promoting her memoirs, the scientist's family said yesterday.

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.

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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.

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