Kevin Federline sounds alarm to ‘save’ Britney Spears, but she fires back

In a new memoir, Kevin Federline, the American dancer, DJ and former husband of Britney Spears, provides his perspective on their strained relationship.

- Matt Stevens and Julia Jacobs

And he says he is concerned that the decision four years ago to release the American pop star from her conservatorship may have been ill-advised.

In You Thought You Knew, due on Oct 21, Federline, 47, charts his path from teenage knucklehead growing up in Fresno, California, to husband and father of two children with the 43-year-old singer.

He and Spears finalised their divorce in 2007 after three years of marriage and then began a prolonged, messy custody battle that ended in 2008. In his book, Federline recounts his version of that dispute and talks of Spears’ use of drugs and alcohol and angry outbursts during the late stages of their marriage.

In the 18 years since their split, he has observed his ex-wife largely from a distance as they co-parented.

“We haven't spoken in years,” Federline told The New York Times in an interview. But he writes about becoming increasingly concerned with what he describes as Spears’ erratic behaviour, which he learnt about mostly secondhand from their sons, now 20 and 19.

In one chapter, he recounts the time when the boys, as teens, declared that they did not want to go back to their mother’s house for several reasons, including fear.

“They would awaken sometimes at night to find her standing silently in the doorway, watching them sleep - ‘Oh, you're awake?’ — with a knife in her hand,” he writes. “Then shed turn around and pad off without explanation.”