To be invited to publish a selection of one's writings is a great honour, and I am most grateful to Paul Norbury for suggesting that I should do so. Making a workable selection has not been easy. Preparing the selection, I kept coming across pieces that I had completely forgotten about. Most were short comments or reviews, but one or two were quite substantial.

I have a certain diffidence about the project. While I did receive a proper academic training, and, since retiring from the Diplomatic Service in 2003, some short periods teaching at university level, I am not an academic, more a pushy amateur. Some describe those in my position as “scholar diplomats”. It is not a term I would use, certainly about myself. Neither is it a term that the British Diplomatic Service would have much time for. Years ago, I came across a reference to Montague Paske-Smith, (1886–1946), a Canadian in the (British) Japan Consular Service, and who, as he moved around from one quiet post to another, wrote a series of historical works, some of which have stood the passage of time. I cannot now find the exact reference, but from memory, a senior member of the Consular Department in London noted that Paske-Smith had not been sent to a particular post so that he could write books. No time for “scholar-diplomats” then. It is not clear whether or not this view was conveyed to Paske-Smith, who continued to publish.

My first task was to make a representative selection of the whole. Since published volumes tend to have a longer life and a higher profile than journal articles or reviews, I have not included extracts from them. However, included are a few journal articles that have been reprinted. Selecting reviews to include was a particularly difficult task. There are so many of them, going back a long way. My first published piece was a review of China and the Christian Colleges, by the American scholar, Jesse Gregory Lutz, which appeared in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies in February 1973.

It did not appear without a struggle. By 1973, I was a member of what was then the Research Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), working on Chinese foreign policy, for which, to be honest, I had the barest of qualifications.