I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

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Aged fifteen and armed with a credit card stolen from his father, Jonny Oates ran away from home and boarded a plane to Addis Ababa. His plan To save the Ethiopian people from the devastating 1985 famine. Discovering that the level of demand for unskilled fifteen-year-old English boys was not huge, he learned the hard lesson that sometimes you can't just change the world by pure force of will.

I Never Promised You a Rose Gardentraces Oates's adventure as it led him to Zimbabwe where, aged eighteen, he was made deputy head of a rural secondary school which had yet to be built. It follows him in South Africa during the final year of Mandela's presidency, where he worked with Zulu leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, as South Africa sought to shape a future from its bitterly divided past. The story culminates in the roller-coaster-ride of Britain's first post-war coalition government where, as Nick Clegg's Chief of Staff, he had a unique view of events that shaped the future of the country and learned important lessons about the difference between power and duty.

It is a story shaped by the struggles of an adolescent boy wrestling with his demons amidst the political and personal conflicts of the 1980s and testimony to his startling discovery that wherever you go, you find yourself.

Author Bio

Jonny Oates was born in 1969 and educated at Marlborough College. He was the director of communications for the Liberal Democrats for the 2010 general election and chief of staff to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg through the coalition government of 2010-15. Inspired by Michael Buerk's world-famous broadcast from the Ethiopian famine, he ran away from home to Addis Ababa in 1985, hoping to help the victims - an endeavour that, unsurprisingly, proved unsuccessful. He subsequently worked as a teacher in a rural school in Zimbabwe and as a political adviser in South Africa's first post-apartheid parliament. He has been a member of the House of Lords since October 2015, where he focuses on climate change, international development and mental health.