China Revisited: guest post by Paul French

Paul French, the series editor of China Revisited, is the bestselling author of Midnight in Peking and Destination Shanghai.

China Revisited is a series of extracted reprints of mid-19th to early-20th century Western impressions of Hong Kong, Macao and Southern China. It comprises excerpts from travelogues or memoirs written by missionaries, diplomats, military personnel, journalists, tourists and temporary sojourners. They came to China from Europe or the United States, some to work or to serve the interests of their country, others out of curiosity. Current titles are: Where Strange Gods Call: Harry Hervey’s 1920s Hong Kong, Macao and Canton Sojourns by Harry Hervey; Wanderings in China: Hong Kong and Canton, Christmas and New Year, 1878 / 1879 by Constance Gordon-Cumming; Ling-Nam: Hong Kong, Canton and Hainan Island in the 1880s by Benjamin Couch ‘BC’ Henry

Paul has fully annotated each title to provide relevant detail of Hong Kong, Macao and China at the time, to illuminate encounters with historically interesting characters, and to explain notable events.

Here, Paul explains the idea behind the series, and how he undertook research during lockdown. 

Someone is Coming: guest post by T.A. Morton

 

T.A. Morton is a Singapore-based British-Australian documentary scriptwriter with a keen interest in William Somerset Maugham. She recently completed a masters in crime and thriller writing at Cambridge University. Her debut novella, Someone is Coming, was published late last year. 

Philip Goundry is 93 and living out his days quietly in a care home in England when a young researcher from Singapore arrives, wanting to learn more about his former life in Malaya for the Singapore archives. His memory growing fitful, Philip is torn between wanting to unburden himself and staying silent, as he has done all these years, about the sinister and shocking events of his childhood on a Malayan rubber plantation. The truth, however, has a habit of winning.

Here, Morton discusses the inspiration for Someone is Coming, and the research behind the story...