Born into a poor, mixed-race, working-class family, David Sarley's journey takes him from a childhood of outside toilets and misplaced silver spoons to the corridors of global power. Along the way he encounters Queen Elizabeth II, President Obama, Bill Gates, Laurence Olivier and - through one degree of separation -Margaret Thatcher, Nikita Khrushchev, Terence Stamp, Saddam Hussein, and Kevin Bacon among plenty of other dropped names.
This is not a rags-to-riches story, though that happens. It's a tale of unlikely connections, outrageous good luck balancing life's challenges. It features opened doors, chance encounters, and the communities that carried one neurodivergent boy further than his ten exam failures should have allowed. Sarley is blessed with a determined single-parent intent on ensuring her kids survived and thrived. A local authority whose social policies lifted his family out of poverty and provided him educational and self-growth opportunities.
The journey spans eighty countries and six decades, rooted in a family history that reaches back to the Ottoman Empire - his great-uncles served among Iraq's first prime ministers - and forward through VSO in Grenada, economic consulting in post-Soviet Russia, and twelve years managing a global health portfolio at the Gates Foundation.
The backdrops to the stories told are the great struggles between competing religions, between East and West, communism, socialism and capitalism, and imperialism and independence. These include the class struggle, racism, the long aftermath of the Atlantic slave trade, and the dismantling of Empire, racial politics in America, Arab nationalism, and Zionism in Israel. In telling them, you might notice something of a Marxist perspective, but it is inspired by Groucho and Harpo, as well as their less funny namesake, Karl.
Sarley depicts snapshots of his life with honesty, sweeping geo-political commentary, and an abundance of good humour. A book for anyone interested in family, history, and the colour in everyday lives, that shows how even the toughest obstacles do not need to block our paths.
