Podcast with Paul French, author of “Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson”

Wallis Simpson in Beijing

When defenders of the British royal family scrounged around for dirt on Wallis Simpson, the divorced US-born fiancée of King Edward VIII, they often highlighted her year spent in China—often sharing scurrilous, and poorly-sourced, if not entirely unfounded, details of her time there.

 

 

Her Lotus Year China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson, Paul French (St Martin’s, November 2024)
Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson, Paul French (St Martin’s, November 2024)

China historian Paul French tries to set the record straight with Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson. Simpson managed to have a jam-packed year, with time spent in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, as different warlords fought for control of China.

Paul French was born in London and lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. His book Midnight in Peking was a New York Times Bestseller and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. He received the Mystery Writers’ of America Edgar award for Best Fact Crime and a Crime Writers’ Association (UK) Dagger award for non-fiction. Both Midnight in Peking and his latest book City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir are currently in development for film.


Nicholas Gordon has an MPhil from Oxford in International Relations and a BA from Harvard. He is a writer, editor and occasional radio host based in Hong Kong.