Two decades ago, Sullivan broke into Hong Kong finance as a 35-year-old Royal Air Force veteran with no experience in the industry. He moved on from equity research into a successful career in sales trading, albeit one outside the big leagues of the Goldmans or Morgan Stanleys. Bittersweet scenes, combined with humorous moments, made this an excellent read. The author presents a character study of a man who never felt he belonged, who always felt that he was left behind.

Dar daugiau - simboliškai man ši knyga skaitėsi po “Motinos pieno”, nes joje luošinanti tėvystė ir jos padariniai taip pat yra ašių ašis. Most global banks have tried to bring in Chinese power brokers. Many of these bankers are not only bilingual but also bicultural - products of elite Western universities who can move seamlessly between China and the global Wall Street. Many also bring deep connections to China’s leadership and state-owned enterprises. Now mostly in their 40s and 50s, they include Morgan Stanley’s Wei Sun Christianson and Credit Suisse Group AG’s Janice Hu. She also writes for children and young adults. Her novel Bilgewater (1977), originally written for children, has now been re-classified as adult fiction. She was awarded the Whitbread Children's Book Award for The Hollow Land (1981) and is the author of A Few Fair Days (1971), a collection of short stories for children set on a Cumberland farm, and two novels for teenagers, A Long Way From Verona (1971), which explores a wartime childhood in Yorkshire, and The Summer After the Funeral (1973), a story about a loss of innocence after the death of a father.

Sir Edward Feathers QC, known as Old Filth (Failed In London Try Hong kong), is acutely aware of his loneliness although he rarely voices it. At heart, Old Filth is about a man's attempts at coping with the death of his wife, and with the undeniable fact that he, someone to whom nothing appears to have happened, is absolutely alone. Even so, perhaps because of this, Sir Edward places himself in unlikely, often humorous situations. It's a humour born of incongruence but not at the expense of the characters. Sir Edward's presence is always sobering, never ridiculous. Little by little we learn the depths of this man, about his past and about his feelings, that is to say, his secrets. I am delighted to talk about Old Filth – and yet I am reluctant,” said Gardam. “It is a very selective book. I still want to write more. Time and the hour, however – I am so much older now than when I first saw him. He changed my fortunes for I was only a sporadic novelist before I met him.” At Citigroup Inc., Chinese students will account for the majority of university graduates the firm intends to hire full time in Hong Kong next year, according to James Mendes, the US bank's Asia-Pacific head of recruitment. In 1997, the UK was undergoing this huge political overhaul and so was Hong Kong so there are very odd parallels." Then I made a mistake,' he said, still not looking at her. 'Maybe it's your hair. It is so thin. I'm sorry.' (p.159)

Her non-fiction includes a book about the Yorkshire of her childhood in The Iron Coast (1994), published with photographs by Peter Burton and Harland Walshaw. What a brilliant book! For me it is a true masterpiece. Jane Gardam wrote an incredibly subtle book about the Raj orphan Edward Feathers, a.k.a. Old Filth. The story has interesting locations and people. His father was a district head in Malaysia and had baby Edward raised by the Malay nanny in the next village, as Edward’s mother died when delivering his son. He did not see his son till he sent him off to England. It is implied that the father suffered from post traumatic stress from fighting in WW-I. But, then again, as you progress with the story you learn that Edward was one of the many Raj children who were sent all alone to England at a very early age. High class colonials were of the opinion that their young children could easily be hurt or killed by living in the tropics, so they should be sent off to boarding schools in England for their own good. However, there seemed not to be an awareness at all that what they did to their children only resulted in everlasting trauma’s of the children feeling displaced and unloved. The two friends in Osborne’s story would become so close that Jimmy would call Adrian his comrade, sometimes using the English and sometimes the Cantonese.

Next recording: Carlo Rovelli

Suraityta meistriškai, vis stebinanti naujais siužeto vingiais, neleidžianti snausti, nes plevenanti per skirtingus britų imperijos laikmečius. People here are very pragmatic, and they will adjust their line of sight to where it allows them to make the most money," said Mullally, the recruiter. Over the years I had come to think of their home as the most elegant in Hong Kong, even though it was old-fashioned, creaky in its way, and stripped of modern technology. It was deliberately Victorian because that had been Melissa’s father’s more Western taste, but gradually her own, and more Chinese sensibility had begun to prevail. The chandeliers were statically ominous, the wall tapestries showed Forbidden City scenes that I couldn’t place stylistically, suspended between Orientalism and the actual East, and the terra-cottas were now everywhere, raised on pedestals or shelved inside niches, museum quality and a shade too proud of themselves. Private banks are also looking for China-skilled staff to help them capture a slice of the country's burgeoning wealth. Bank of Singapore Ltd., a unit of Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp., for example, hired 20 Mandarin-speaking relationship managers in Hong Kong this year. Le Carré’s portrait of Hong Kong as a Cold War listening post for the West and a stopping-off point for correspondents covering Southeast Asia was still fresh in my mind when I landed and met fellow journalists at the Foreign Correspondents Club, where the book’s opening scene is set. Le Carré describes the afternoon of a typhoon at the FCC, when “a score of journalists, mainly from former British colonies ̶ Australian, Canadian American ̶ fooled and drank in a mood of violent idleness.” That afternoon the journalists get wind of a big story: “The Island’s most hush-hush establishment, High Haven, base for Britain’s cloak-and-dagger ploys against Red China, has been summarily shut down.”