Lanchester intertwines personal histories and the city's history with great skill, showing how the past lives on, even in a city as resolutely modern as Hong Kong. He studied first at Armstrong College in Newcastle, and then at the Royal College of Art, London (1922-1927). He went on to become Head of Drawing and Painting at Gloucester College of Art (1931) where he taught until his retirement in 1963. Sasek’s own three favourites were ‘This Is Venice’ (1961), ‘This Is Hong Kong’ (1965) and ‘This Is Edinburgh’ (1961) – though, as he reported to Lee Bennett Hopkins, he hated the Scottish weather in Edinburgh.

A Rigby, an authority on the artist Frank Branwyn whose murals adorned the school chapel, and Rigby encouraged Vaughan’s evident interest in the visual arts. Then the last of the Sung emperors came here in the thirteenth century, fleeing the Mongols, Kubla Khan among them, he of the stately pleasure-dome where Alph the sacred river ran.If any of these technologies are turned off or not supported we can not guarantee full functionality.

Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed, Bustle, and Electric Literature, Lisa Ko's debut novel is essential reading for our times. As Marian Barbour commented, “While Shephard’s early work was bleakly linear, in the late 1930s and 1940s this gave way to the more painterly style, cool and tonal in the Euston Road tradition that derived from Sickert. A period during which there were vast changes in the area from the British rule through the Japanese war then the Chinese refugees escaping the communist rule and finally the hand over to the Chinese.This is one I have been meaning to read for some time now but have never got around to it – your review suggests to me that this might have been wise!