Her Lotus Year: Hankow Road, Hong Kong

Wallis’s old China haunts are surprisingly well preserved – the Palace Hotel on the Bund, the Astor in Tianjin, the Grand Hotel (now the Nuo) in Beijing but in Hong Kong all is gone – the Repulse Bay Hotel, the HongKong Hotel both gone and her old lodgings on Hankow Road in Tsim Sha Tsui where sadly not a trace lingers…

Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now…

The Defectors – praised but sadly the penultimate Drama on 3 – the sad demise of audio drama at the BBC

Radio hardly ever gets lengthy and detailed reviews like this – and I’m amazed – but Chris Bennion in the Telegraph is also making the massive point that my drama-doc The Defectors (on BBC Sounds now – click here) is one of the final dramas BBC Radio 3 will ever do unless we can change their minds to value drama on 3…..There is an online petition you can sign here

The Royal Asiatic Society Beijing’s AGM & Dinner…

There’s a very special dinner after this year’s RAS Beijing AGM – dinner at the old Grand Hotel de Pekin (where Wallis Simpson and a host of other luminaries, stars, disreputable types and wannabes stayed over the years) with some remarks by me. Apparently 1920s dress is encouraged but not obligatory….

You are cordially invited to come to RASBJ’s annual post-AGM dinner at the Old Peking Hotel and hear Paul French on late Qing to 1930’s Beijing and its expatriate community.

Drinks will be served from 7pm, and dinner from 7.30-9.30pm.

WHAT: RASBJ post-AGM dinner featuring award-winning author Paul French as keynote speaker

WHEN: Saturday, March 22, 2025, 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM Beijing standard time. Doors open at 7:00 PM

WHERE: Beijing Hotel Nuo (the former Peking Hotel), 33 East Chang An Avenue, Dongcheng, Beijing tel: 8526 3388

Royal Asiatic Society Beijing – A Dinner, Discussion and Conversation About Shijia Hutong – 19/3/25

Home of so many famous foreigners and Chinese – the famous, the creative, the right, the powerful – Beijing’s Shih-Chia (Shijia) Hutong saw them all…. and they need to be remembered. SO, courtesy of the Royal Asiatic Society Beijing, I’ll be holding a dinner with the fantastically knowledge director of the Shijia Hutong Museum “Matthew” Hu Xinyu on the evening of Wednesday March 19.

Her Lotus Year in Paris

If you’re in Paris the charming Librarie Galignani has copies of Her Lotus Year in stock – https://www.galignani.fr

Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai – RAS Stories of Things, March 21 – Shanghai movie stars and wooden buddhas

Stories of Things is delighted to present our next program on March 21st, 2025, 7:00pm at the Sketch Yard Restaurant near the RAS Reading Room.

Stories of Things veteran, Professor Andrew Field, is back with a photographic movie scrapbook from the 1930’s that he found in a Beijing flea market almost 30 years ago. Dr. Field will lead us through a story that not only looks at the cinema world of that time, but also delves into the world of a fan who might have assembled such a book.

Long-time Shanghai resident and serial collector, Brent Beisher, will bring along a short documentary about his collecting obsession, as well as one of his favorite finds: a wooden buddha retrieved from the “graveyard” of a traditional buddhist sculptor. Come along to learn what drives Brent further afield to assemble his eclectic and kaleidoscopic collection of things.

Beverages and light snacks will be served. Entry for members and friends is rmb100. Non-members is rmb200.

March 21 – 7pm

Sketch Yard Art Restaurant
L1-A02, Building 13, 888 Dongan Road
Shanghai, China

click here to register

Historic Shanghai by Carlos Augusto De Jesus, 1909

Historic Shanghai by Macanese author Carlos Augusto De Jesus, 1909 was in some ways a follow up to his classic Historic Macao (1902). Historic Shanghai was published by the book publishing arm of The Shanghai Mercury newspaper. Particularly interesting are the number of maps in the book including two below – of Gordon military plans during the Taiping Uprising and a very early map of Shanghai…..

Well that was HKILF 2025

What a fantastic Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2025 was… Congratulations to Laura Mannering, Daniella Lopez and all the HKILF team. I was delighted to be the closing event, talking Wallis Simpson is China, scandal, warlords and Wallis’s China style with Michelle “M” Garnaut at Soho House….