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Michael Broadbent
Mike Broadbent was born in Oxford in 1954 to an ill-fated couple who were not able to bring him up. He was swiftly adopted by a loving and caring Yorkshire family.
From then on Mike's family life,...view moreMike Broadbent was born in Oxford in 1954 to an ill-fated couple who were not able to bring him up. He was swiftly adopted by a loving and caring Yorkshire family.
From then on Mike's family life, schooling and university education were entirely appropriate for a middle class child of the time, although always shaped on his part by an incredible drive and work ethic. This trait was accentuated and focused by Sedbergh School, which had a formative influence on him including instilling a fierce sense of competition. There he acquired a love of rugby and English literature both of which were lifelong passions. He thrived at Cambridge University reading English. He coupled academic brilliance with a colossal appetite for work, which resulted in a Double First and the highest awards for his achievements. He was the best that Cambridge could produce, but even he discovered the difficulties of 'What next?'
He found the answer in Hong Kong with a career-defining role as head of public relations at HSBC. It was a time of massive flux for HSBC and Hong Kong. He helped transition the bank to London and communicate the changes in business that the 1997 handover to China would bring. He rose to every professional challenge and opportunity again harnessing his Herculean capacity for work. However he still found time, somehow, to travel and see the world, and meet the love of his life - Joyce Chiu.
He was a victim of his own success and was asked by HSBC to return to London. Although desperately sad to leave his beloved Hong Kong, he prepared to take on an exciting new chapter as head of the HSBC Group Corporate Affairs Department, a massive global responsibility.
However, all future plans were catastrophically upended by a diagnosis of early onset Parkinson's Disease. He now faced the biggest challenge of his life. Described as incurable, but not terminal, PD, as he and Joyce came to call it, dominated the last chapters of his life, but could not prevent his determination to exercise his independence, discover the truth about his birth, participate in difficult medical trials and to write this book.
In the last five years of his life, he found it a challenge to make himself understood because his speech was so slurred, and he had to type with one finger. His life had shaped him to rise above every difficulty and nowhere was this better demonstrated than by the way he took on the last years of his life. He never once lapsed into self-pity, but met PD with every strength he had, aided by Joyce who was at his side throughout and a constant source of care, concern and comfort.
Throughout all his suffering, his unquenchable and supreme sense of wit and humour shone through. Mike's book was first published privately for friends and family in 2018. In the same year Joyce published her companion book of poetry, From The Heart. Both books sat under the Christmas tree that year, the third Christmas they shared since doctors had told them to expect no more. Mike Broadbent died on February 21st, 2019.view less