This book is written with charm and humour by a child who grew up between two worlds – an idyllic childhood in Hong Kong in the 1950s which was shattered by his return to England at the age of seven to a new life as a boarder at a Catholic preparatory school.
From the age of seven to seventeen, he travels between these worlds and comments on all the changes that occur in this dynamic decade. He sees Hong Kong develop from an entrepot to a booming manufacturing powerhouse with the effect this has on the Cantonese and their relationship with Europeans and compares this life to the smog-bound, tired English way of life only just beginning to recover from the devastation of the Second World War.
It is a joy to read and is a fascinating record of two worlds by a child of a bygone age.