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Against All the Odds

其他書名	The Life of Philip Hargreaves-Scott
出版	Independently Published, 2019-06-02
ISBN	10978596149781097859610
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=L5VTywEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋'Against All The Odds', in four parts, is the story of the life of my great friend Philip Hargreaves-Scott. It is as he recorded it and told it to me in two volumes separated by forty four years, when he was 31 and a half, and later when almost 77. I have used him as its narrator just as he was to me. It is set in the world of 1942 to 2019 and, as far as his life is concerned, is absolutely true. Most unusual is the large number of important and influential people who have met him. Born into a family of famous entertainers and broadcasters during WW2, he later becomes friends with five reigning heads of state, two popes, a US president in office and a close family friend who was once king of England.It begins with him telling the first part to another person as well as me. I hope you enjoy it and realise just how astoundingly different the 'cold war world' was, spiritually, technologically, socially and morally compared to our digitally controlled internet times today.The first Volume, 'Starting to Live' , begins with his birth in Part one, entitled 'Coming of Age'. Here he takes us through the first 18 years of his almost unbelievable life for someone his age. It is filled with love, terrible sadness, the wonderful gift of being a really brilliant classical pianist, serious mental illness from the age of five, his deep love of God, his family's enormous wealth, years of sadistic abuse at school, his involvement in diplomatic rescue missions and above all his inability to ignore helping anyone in need. How he had the means to do this, with his great friends Hugh Denton and Sally Jamieson, is in itself almost a fairy tale except that it happened. Part two, 'Discovering the World', concerns his life from the age of 19 to almost 32 describing his loves and multi-lingual adventures, his life in Paris, Geneva and Italy, as a journalist at the second Vatican Council, while studying also at three universities, The Sorbonne, Geneva and Pisa. Then follows his years as a war correspondent in Indo-China while also continuing his astonishing missions of mercy, including helping run a refuge for blind orphans in Saigon, and diplomatic espionage, mingled with great personal love and bereavement on four continents.In the second volume, 'Joining and Severing', Part Three, 'The Piercing Arrows of Truth', covers the years during which he and Hugh continue their philanthropic life and many espionage missions around the globe while their large families grow into teenagers. Much sadness and happiness highlight the start, while his disillusionment with his Church, as more abuse scandals come to light and even affect his own school and family, are centred round rescue missions to bring refugees out of Vietnam. This is followed by his final acceptance of his faith in God, despite his terrible mental illness. Part three ends with the wonderful romances and marriages of all his and Hugh's children by the summer of 1990. But finally, Part four, 'Our Digital World', is totally different and Pip's narrative style is forced to change for many reasons, leading to a tantalising ending in the form of an unanswered question. Also Of Philip himself I will say only this, for he would not. He is by far the most kind-hearted, loving, if devious while humorous, mentally tormented, musically gifted, charming and God-loving person I have ever known. Everything is true, in so far as it actually happened to him or his friends and members of their families. Alas, many names have had to be changed as requested by living people for obvious reasons. But the real 'Pip' is still very much alive, as the extraordinary epilogue testifies.