Jim Rogers Co-Authors AU$36.99 Memoir After Dementia Diagnosis at 55

Q: How did a legendary Wall Street billionaire hide a secret romance by removing a garden fence in a conservative English village?

He did it by living next door to his partner rather than openly sharing one home. After Jim Rogers’s first wife, Lorna, died of melanoma, he met Tyler on a holiday in the Canary Islands. Their friendship became a romance, but Rogers feared how a same-sex relationship would be viewed in their conservative English village. When the house next door came up for sale, Rogers and Tyler bought it. That arrangement let them remain close without immediately confronting local expectations about living together as a couple. To make daily life easier, they removed a panel from the garden fence between the two properties, creating a discreet passage so they could move freely from one house to the other. Rogers initially introduced Tyler to relatives and others as a friend. Over time, the relationship became accepted by the family, including Rogers’s father, and Tyler became an important presence in the lives of Rogers’s three children. The “secret romance” was therefore hidden not through elaborate deception but through a practical domestic compromise shaped by the social climate of the time: two neighboring houses, one altered fence, and a relationship that could exist privately until it was gradually understood and accepted. Rogers later said Tyler restored happiness to his life and remained his key source of support, including after Rogers was diagnosed with early-onset dementia.

1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Aug 29

Rogers, now a dementia advocate, wrote “Holding On To Happiness” with his daughter Millie Robinson after being diagnosed with early-onset dementia at 55.
Work problems first signaled the illness: the longtime property-project manager grew forgetful and at one doctor’s visit could not work out how to silence his phone.
Tyler, his partner of 25 years, pushed him to “draw a line in the sand,” helping pull Rogers out of depression after the diagnosis.
The memoir also traces the couple’s path from meeting on a Canary Islands holiday after Rogers was widowed to building a life together in England, Perth and Sydney.
Pan Macmillan will publish the book on Sept. 1 at an Australian list price of AU$36.99.