On 25 December 1941, the day of Hong Kong's surrender to the Japanese, Admiral Chan Chak—the Chinese government's chief agent in Hong Kong—and more than 60 Chinese and British intelligence, naval and marine personnel made a dramatic escape from the invading army. They travelled on five small motor torpedo boats—all that remained of the Royal Navy in Hong Kong—across Mirs Bay, landing at a beach near Nanao. Then, guided by guerrillas and villagers, they walked for four days through enemy lines to Huizhou, before flying to Chongqing or travelling by land to Burma. The breakout laid the foundations of an escape trail jointly used by the British Army Aid Group and the East River Column for the rest of the war. Chan Chak, the celebrated "one-legged admiral", became Mayor of Canton after the war and was knighted by the British for his services to the Allied cause. His comrade in the escape, David MacDougall, became head of the civil administration of Hong Kong in 1945. This gripping narrative account of the escape draws on a wealth of primary sources in both English and Chinese and sheds new light on the role played by the Chinese in the defence of Hong Kong, on the diplomacy behind the escape, and on the guerillas who carried the Admiral in a sedan chair as they led his party over the rivers and mountains of enemy-occupied China. Escape from Hong Kong will appeal not just to military historians and those with a special interest in Hong Kong and China but also to anyone who appreciates a good old-fashioned adventure story.

Stranger In My Heart is about the search for understanding oneself, answering the question “Who am I?” by seeking to understand the currents that sweep down the generations, eddy through one’s own persona and continue on – palpable but often unrecognised. My father fought at the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941, was taken prisoner by the Japanese and then escaped in February 1942, making his way across 1200 miles of inhospitable country to reach China’s wartime capital at Chongqing. Seventy years later I retraced his steps in an effort to understand a man who had died when I was 18, leaving a lot of unanswered questions behind. My book is the quest that I undertook to explore my father’s life, in the context of the Pacific War and our relationship with China. A picture of a man of the greatest generation slowly unfolds, a leader, a 20th Century Great, but a distant father. As I delve into his story and research the unfamiliar territory of China in the Second World War, the mission to get to know the stranger I called ‘Dad’ resolves into a mission to understand how my own character was formed. As I travel across China, the traits I received from my father gradually emerge from their camouflage. The strands of the story are woven together in a flowing triple helix, with biography, travelogue and memoir punctuated with musings on context and meaning.

The experiences and attitudes of a man who lived under Chinese Communism, rising to a position of importance before his decision to flee to the West, whose story describes much of life and society under Maoism. Robert Loh is the first educated Chinese to give a view from the inside of life in Red China. Son of a well-to-do family who was sent to study political science in the United States during the period when the authority of the Nationalist Government was disintegrating, Loh chose to return to Shanghai to contribute what he could toward reshaping China into a major world power. Robert Loh is at pains to make clear that he could not have survived, and indeed lived a relatively privileged life in communist China without giving in to much that he hated and despised.

Trapped in the depths of Japanese-held territory, it was rare for Allied prisoners of war to attempt escape. There was little chance of making contact with anti-guerrilla or underground organisations and no possibility of Europeans blending in with the local Asian populations. Failure, and recapture, meant execution. This was what Lieutenant Commander R.B. Goodwin faced when he decided to escape from the Shamsuipo PoW Camp in Kowloon, Hong Kong in July 1944 after three years of internment.With no maps and no knowledge of the country or the language, Lieutenant Commander Goodwin set out across enemy territory and war-torn China. Because of the colour of his skin he had to travel during the hours of darkness for much of what was an 870-mile journey to reach British India. Few of his fellow prisoners gave him any chance of succeeding, yet, little more than three months later, he was being transported to the safety of Calcutta. For his daring and determination Lieutenant Commander Goodwin was awarded the Order of the British Empire.