I’m rather pleased with this UK paperback of Her Lotus Year…. thanks to all at Elliot & Thompson in London… many thanks to Anne Sebba, Amanada Foreman and Lisa See for their blurbs, and also to Caroline Moorehead in The Spectator and the legendary Nicky Haslam in The Oldie for their kind words.
The cover image is Cecil Beaton by the way….(more below)
Available from July 10 everywhere books are sold in the UK…
For those interested in the cover image. It is Wallis shot by Cecil Beaton for the British edition of Vogue on December 2, 1936. The portrait is one of six of Wallis Simpson in the Cecil Beaton photography exhibition that opened at Caroll Carstairs’ New York gallery at #11 East 57th Street on January 4, 1937 around the time British Vogue called Wallis “The Best Dressed Woman in Town”.
The original shot before we cropped it for the paperback cover of Her Lotus Year
more relaxed shot of Wallis in Beaton’s studio the same day in December 1936
Cecil Beaton with Wallis, the Duke of Windsor and Edward Dudley Metcalfe at the Duke and Duchess’s wedding in France (Beaton was their photographer for the day)
From the streets of Petrograd during the heady autumn of 1917, to Mao’s stunning victory in October 1949, and Fidel’s triumphant arrival in Havana, in January 1959, the history of the twentieth century was transformed in dramatic and profound ways by the Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions.
In Three Revolutions, the stories of these epoch-defining events are told together for the first time. At the heart of each revolution was an epic journey: Lenin’s 1917 return to Russia from exile in Switzerland; Mao’s ‘Long March’ of 1934-35, covering some 6,000 miles across China; and Fidel Castro’s return to Cuba in 1956 following his exile in Mexico. Told in tandem with these are the corresponding journeys of three extraordinary journalists – John Reed, Edgar Snow and Herbert L. Matthews – whose electric testimony from the frontlines of each revolution would make a decisive contribution to how these revolutions were understood in the wider world.
Here, in Simon Hall’s masterful retelling, these six remarkable journeys are brought vividly to life. Featuring a stellar cast, extraordinary drama and an epic sweep, Three Revolutions raises fundamental questions about the nature of political power, the limits of idealism and the role of the journalist – questions that remain of utmost urgency today.
I recently posted on the mystery of Ivy Achoy. This was after seeing a portrait by Cedric Morris at the Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines exhibition at Charleston in East Sussex (the old home of Vanessa and Julian Bell). Among the various Morris painted portraits is one dated as 1922 (which may or may not be correct) and said to be of “Ivy Ichaloy”. It is a portrait of a Chinese woman in a cheongsam-style dress from the upper body up. Anyway Ivy Ichaloy turned out to Trinidadian-Chinese Ivy Achoy. You can read the post here and the comments that added some information from relatives and scholars in Trinidad.
And now my thanks to Trapper Byrne of the USA who sent me Ivy Achoy’s (successful) application to enter the United States in 1922 from the US National Archives; it’s part of the Chinese Exclusion Act files. (Achoy qualified for a student exemption to the immigration ban).
This also casts some doubt on the 1922 date on the Cedric Morris portrait at Charleston. It seems Achoy was in the USA and, perhaps, looks a little older in the portrait (though of course it is a painting and not a photograph so…) – below, which would make the date post-1922. I am not sure when Ivy left the US and if she travelled from there to the UK.
Chatting Wallis in China with Essex Book Festival Director Ros Green on the last (& all history) day for 2025 at Layer Marney Tower. Always a sprawling, varied, brilliant festival….
In conversation with Georgy Jamieson at the Felixstowe Book Festival in the Palm Court at Harvest House on the seafront (where Wallis ate strawberries and cream while awaiting her divorce from Ernest Simpson) – what a lovely engaged audience
Book festivals take you to the most amazing places – Layer Marney Tower (England’s tallest Tudor Gatehouse, c.1523) hosted the Essex Book Festival History Books day….
The Beautiful Miss Brooke (1879) is a novel by Louis Zangwill, the lesser known younger brother of London novelist and playwright Israel Zangwill. It’s a rather turgid tale a young woman, art, self-discovery etc that’s plenty dated. More interestingly the book was illustrated by WH Margetson and Herbert Horwitz and includes this illustration of Miss Bourke at home with a rather odd but interesting large Chinese parasol hanging from the ceiling of her London rooms above her without a handle. It doesn’t quite work as a light shade so i assume it is there to illustrate Miss Brookes’ style and sophistication.
Came across this interesting needlework “sampler” (a piece of embroidery produced as a demonstration or a test of skill in needlework) recently in England. It’s from 1937 (February 24 to be precise!) and relates to the four seasons. Around the edge are various characters – Alice in Wonderland, Dick Whittington and a representation of Aladdin as Chinese (the earliest known versions of One Thousand and One Nights of course places Aladdin in a Chinese city, despite different interpretations in subsequent pantomime and Disneyesque re-tellings). You can see his magic lamp conjuring the genie as he wears a conical hat, traditional Chinese boots with upturned toes (Xue – 靴) and a Qing Dynasty queue. Aladdin was usually represented as Chinese and in China in British pantomimes of the Victorian era and beyond.
My recent article for the South China Morning Post weekend “Post” magazine on art-deco in Kowloon featured a series of photographs, as below. Click here to read in full. The cover is a detail from the art-deco shops/apartment building at 190-220 Prince Edward Road West, Kowloon and the others are of Kadoorie Hill properties by Eugene Chan….
My great thanks to Tia Gretta of Buenos Aires, Argentina who sent me these pictures of a wonder Camel’s Bell purse. I’ve blogged before about American Helen Burton’s wonderful clothing, furs, accessories, art and curios store, Thew Camel’s Bell, in the Grand Hotel de Pekin on Chang’an Avenue that was open in the inter-war years. I’ve also shown examples of another purse (click here to read that post). Burton produced many purses, handbags and other accessories under her own brand using local materials and seamstresses. This needlepoint purse from Tia is in excellent condition and very beautiful.
