Across the Broken Years

A Legacy of SurvivalBeaten each week at a Catholic boarding school, Kit Sadgrove grew up in a world ruled by fear and silence. But this remarkable memoir goes far beyond the school gates. Woven through his own harrowing yet hopeful story is the tale of his ancestors-lives marked by hardship, resilience, and astonishing adventure.Step into the shadows of a Georgian workhouse, where Sadgrove’s great-great-grandmother clung to life while burying two children there. Sail into battle during the Napoleonic Wars as a 14-year-old recruit. Stand on the boggy soil where his ancestors eked out a living - and the aristocratic ballrooms of Dublin where they finally danced. Follow his mother, as she flees the advancing Nazis, and Victor, his father, as he takes the surrender of the German forces in WWII.From bomb-making and scrubbing toilets on North Sea rigs to riding freight trains across America, Sadgrove’s life is anything but ordinary. Spanning 300 years, this gripping memoir is part family saga, part personal reckoning-and every word of it a true story.True stories:Attacked by a highwaymanTwo public hangingsCondemned to a hulk prison shipFighting the nascent US navyAttacking Napoleon’s armyLiving in the slums of LondonA bigamous marriageMy family’s £2.1m ($2.8m) forgeriesWe are bankruptThe biggest fraud everOur aircraft manufacturing business in 1916Surviving the Irish Famine in 1845The Irish insurrection 1916Going to war in MesopotamiaGetting the first ever self-winding wrist watchBeing Master and Matron of a workhouseSending orphan children out to work in the streetsLife as a gunner in WW1Finding love in RomeLiving in a house without electricitySent to boarding school at age 5Surviving on sugar sandwichesBeaten for not being good at mathsEncounters with 11 paedophilesConfessing to masturbationThe right eyeball of a martyred saintThomas Becket’s skullA thorn from Jesus’ crown of thorns18 mortal sinsThe things have stolenA knife attack in churchDeath from work related silicosisWeekly corporal punishmentsThe first supermarketWorking at a strike bound construction siteCleaning toilets in the North SeaHitchhiking across the USARiding freight trainsMy first sexual encountersWomen I have knownMy work colleague is killed by a drunkI become a millionairePlanning for a nuclear warMy protest outside the US embassyI create a national newspaperMe and Arthur ScargillI become a fake priest