In her enthralling memoir, The Colour of the Sky After Rain, Lady Tessa Keswick follows the footsteps of intrepid western explorers like Isabella Bird and Mildred Cable.
From 12.00 noon BST
At Goldster Book Club
In her enthralling memoir, The Colour of the Sky After Rain, Lady Tessa Keswick follows the footsteps of intrepid western explorers like Isabella Bird and Mildred Cable, whose early 20th Century accounts brought alive the scale and magnificence of China to a western audience. Drawing on her travels in China over thirty years Lady Keswick conjures the grandeur of its deserts in the west, the forests of the northeast, the great Yangzi river, the garden cities of the south and more besides. There is no temple or philosopher's shrine, or mountain or hamlet without a story.
For anybody coming to China for the first time she has provided a superb guidebook, beautifully illustrated with her photos, but Lady Keswick is also telling the story, good and bad, of what China has become today - a country over the time she has visited that has been torn out of poverty and revolution to become a huge economy and now one of the foremost powers in the world. Already well versed in politics and social issues in the UK, this author’s deep understanding of China comes from living with ordinary citizens in their homes and also meetings with many state leaders and prominent businessmen who over the years have given her and her husband private audience in the Great Hall of the People or visited or stayed in her own beautiful mansion in Wiltshire. The resulting book is both entertaining and informative, a gem to turn to again and again for more.