A compelling history of Britain's complicated and compromised relationship with China between the start of the Opium Wars in 1839 and the transfer of power in Hong Kong in 1997

Lawrence James was a founding member of the University of York and then took a research degree at Merton College, Oxford. After a distinguished teaching career he became a full-time writer in 1985 and has emerged as one of the outstanding narrative historians of his generation for works including The Rise and Fall of the British Empire and Churchill and Empire.