Martha Gellhorn in Hong Kong & in the London Library

Posted: October 8th, 2025 | No Comments »

I was prepping in the London Library today for an event at the old Repulse Bay Hotel later this month on literary reminiscences and writing about the old place. One person I definitely want to include is Martha Gellhorn who visited the Repulse Bay Hotel with her then husband Ernest Hemingway in March 1941 en route to Chongqing. It was a disappointing trip for her – Hemingway was predictably being a bit of a dick, not taking his reporting gig seriously and lazy about heading into mainland China. Eventually Gellhorn left him to his childish antics and went alone. He caught up later a little shamefacedly. It didn’t help that they also hit the colony in the midst of a typhoid epidemic. They retreated from the typhoid to the Repulse Bay Hotel, then as she saw it, ‘a country hotel’ – not for long, but enough to make some notes about it.

Anyway, I dug out the London Library copy of her 1978 memoirs, Travels with Myself and Another, to remind myself of what she had to say about the Repulse Bay Hotel and interestingly the copy they have was donated by Gellhorn herself, which to me is rather special. From 1980, when she was about 70, (and when she donated the copy presumably while in London) she moved to live in Kilgwrrwg near Devauden in Gwent, South Wales.

And, if you’re in Hong Kong on October 18th do come along to Repulse Bay to hear more….(it’s free, but do sign up here)

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