I happened to be on Wyndham Street in Marylebone today passing by William Somerset Maugham’s old home.
Maugham moved here just after WW1. He was newly married to Syrie and they had a daughter. But Maugham was of course gay and had already met his lifelong partner Gerald Haxton. Forced to choose the future of his life Maugham and Haxton travelled to Asia in 1919-20. Upon returning to Wyndham Street Maugham wrote On a Chinese Screen and his The Painted Veil, his two great China-related works.
A Shanghai Driving License issued to A Hindson, 23 years old and living on Aivei Road, better known as Avenue Road, and now Beijing Lu. The licence was issued on November 19, 1930 (19 being a reference to Chinese Republic years since 1911). Interestingly the licence specially states that Hindson is driving a Morris Cowley (I’ll put a pic of one below for non-British readers who may not be familiar with the classic UK car). I don’t know much about Hindson except that he obviously liked machinery and tech – he was the secretary and treasurer for the Shanghai Amateur Photographic Society for a while. I think he was from a family that had been in China for some time as a man also called Hindson, who could well be his father, appears in the records working for the Shanghai Public Health Department and then Rose, Downs and Thompson (Far East) traders.
In March I spent some time with John le Carre’s biographer Adam Sisman. We spoke at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival and the Macao International Literary Festival (aka The Script Road) about le Carre, his time in mid-1970s Hong Kong and his Hong Kong-set magnum opus The Honourable Schoolboy (1977). You can see a video of our conversation in Macao’s Casa Garden here…
And there’s also a piece by me on le Carre’s time at the Hong Kong FCC (then at Sutherland House on Chater Road just before it moved to its current location on Lower Albert Road) and an interview (again by me) with Sisman in the bar at the FCC in the most recent edition of the Club’s in-house magazine, The Correspondent. Click here or read the entire magazine online here…
Three photos of the (unnamed) 1906 Hong Kong typhoon was a tropical cyclone that hit Hong Kong on 18 September 1906. The typhoon caused property damage exceeding a million pounds sterling, affected international trade and took the lives of around 15,000 people
When I posted this c.1929 photograph of a factory in Weihaiwei (Weihai) on instagram (oldshanghaipaul) I must admit I didn’t even both to even google it simply assuming it would be long gone. But, thanks to Weihai resident Yi Liu, I find that it is there still and has been brilliantly repurposed. It is now the China Lettering Art Museum of calligraphy and typesetting, which opened in 2012, on Liugong Island. The 200 exhibits show the integration of traditional Chinese characters with modern art forms.
It is obviously typical of the European-influenced, granite, architecture on Liugong, which was part of the British leased territory of Weihaiwei till 1931 and also a base for the Royal Navy China Station. Also unknown to me was that Liugong was designated as a key protection site of cultural relics by the State Council in 1988. Sources online claim the original building was a British built distillation tower.
Remember, Bookshop.org launched in the UK in November 2020 as a platform for independent bookshops to sell physical books. Bookshops receive 30% of the cover price from each sale they generate on Bookshop.org.
Murdoch Bruce (active 1840-1855) held the post of an Inspector of Buildings in Hong Kong. An architect by training, he was also an outstanding amateur watercolourist, and provided a meticulous transcription of the city’s classical colonial architecture a few years after the British settled on the island. His series of twelve watercolours for Hong Kong were lithographed in 1846…
The World of Suzie Wong Night Club, Hong Kong, captured in 1966 in the movie Kill A Dragon. Inspired by Richard Mason’s 1957 novel and 1960 film. A sailor and tourist trap. Located in Wanchai on Lockhart Road near Tonnochy Road (you can see Gilman Motors in the daytime shot which was, I think, on the Tonnochy and Gloucester Roads block (still a centre of the motor trade)…. The interiors are also on location I believe.
