Her Lotus Year: The North China Floods of 1924

The northern China Wallis ventured into in late 1924 was chaotic. Warlord troops of Wu Peifu and Zhang Zuolin battling across the region, an attempted peace conference with a sick Sun Yat-sen attempting to hold the country together failing and on top of all the messy politics the worst flooding in decades that destroyed crops and brought famine, cholera, typhoid and banditry in its wake. Yet Wallis arrived in Tianjin en route to Peking in the midst of it all – why the hell did she leave the relative safety and comfort of the Shanghai International Settlement for the turmoil of the north?

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