Remembering Sir Robert Hart – The “IG’s” Tombstone Re-Dedicated

Noting Robert Bickers yesterday reminded me that I should also note the brilliant job he’s done around the re-dedication of the gravestone of Sir Robert and Lady Hester Jane Hart. I don’t expect I really need to tell regular readers of this blog the exhaustive history the “IG”, Sir Robert Hart of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service (but if you don’t know or you’re having an off day here’s more on him). Robert, Dr Weipin Tsai at Royal Holloway University of London and others having done a great job restoring the grave (at Bisham in Berkshire) and they recently had a great rededication, of which more details and pictures here. I hope they won’t me reposting an image of the lovingly restored tombstone. There’s more about the day, the classical music that accompanied it and all that here.

Hart as portrayed in Vanity Fair in 1894