Paddy Ashdown, A Fortunate Life

Ed. note: Paddy Ashdown is the guest speaker Tuesday 2 June at the Chateau de Prangins. The event is  sponsored by Executives International. Details, registration He will also be appearing Wednesday 1 July at a book signing at Off the Shelf in Geneva, followed by a presentation at an evening event sponsored by the British Swiss Chamber of Commerce at the Hotel Beau Rivage.

Paddy Ashdown, for eleven years leader of the UK Liberal Democrats, Britain’s third political party, has a special significance for Genevans. For years he was one of us, and his love of skiing, the Alps and nearby Savoie and Burgundy rings through his autobiography. He even has a French son-in-law and French grandchildren.

Paddy’s Bedford School reports claim that he had ‘no aptitude for languages’.  He modestly declares in a footnote that, when asked how many languages he speaks, he says he has forgotten six and is ‘nowadays only comfortable in French’. This from a man who has the equivalent of a first class honours degree in Chinese and who, in the course of a thrilling career, has functioned in Hindi, Malay, German, and what used to be called Serbo-Croat!

Such modesty is typical of the man we feel we know well from his political days. Many of us remember his years in Parliament, the initial triumph in the Yeovil seat and the growing strength of his party. We recall a scandal where he was hounded by the press. We sympathise with the failed ambition to partner Tony Blair in a move towards the proportional representation and constitutional reform that the UK’s third party would so warmly welcome. This section of Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon’s autobiography leaves us with a sense of  ’déja vu’ where we love Paddy for his honesty. In the current British political climate of corruption, it is refreshing to read of such political passion, defence of liberal ideas and devoted enthusiasm for a cause.

But this section of the autobiography (just over a third) pales in significance compared with the other parts: the accounts of Paddy’s school years, his leadership of a commando in Borneo, the Special Boat Service, time in Belfast, and his deeply emotional involvement with the cause of Bosnia Herzegovina.

Paddy admits, several times, that a privileged education has led him into his ‘fortunate life’, but Bedford was not easy. Gifted at sport but not keen on the academic aspects of school, he survived  early years of rough-and-tumble of a public school because of his ability to fight.

At 18, he chose the Royal Marines rather than a university. That is where the really exciting sections of the book begin. The descriptions of the jungle patrols of his commando are in such evocative prose that we feel as though we have shared the experiences – like the parachuting, and  nerve-wracking underwater entries and exits from a submarine during his Special Boat Service years.

The most moving element of the work is, undeniably, the involvement with the Balkan crisis. Lord Ashdown himself says in his prologue,

two of my Technicolor days, the best and the worst, fall consecutively in the second week of August 1992. Together they form not just a memory but also somehow a distillation of the theme of my life; that of conflict and its human consequences when the beast of intolerance and bigotry gets loose. Looking back, this seems like a subterranean stream which has appeared, vanished and re-emerged, never completely leaving me, since my earliest days.

He is speaking of his meeting with Radovan Karadzic and subsequent visit to  the brutal prison of Manjaca.

His description of Bosnia Herzegovina, where he spent nearly four years as the International High Representative and European Union Special Representative, is simply beautiful. We live with him and Jane, his wife, through four moving years there.

We leave this book feeling immense admiration for such a gentle and honest man who has given his life so generously for causes he truly believes in.

There is the light-hearted side too! A wealth of anecdotes enriches this autobiography and raises a smile on almost every page – like the wonderful one about a lecturer’s demonstration of how to survive – eat a live frog sandwich - or the description of coping with Balkan politics – ‘like herding cats’.

Paddy Ashdown’s autobiography, A Fortunate Life, can be obtained in Geneva from the English Bookshop, Off the Shelf.