A lecture given by the Friends of East Asia will take place on Saturday 28th November, 2026 when author Graham Hutchings will talk about the life of Sir Cecil Clementi, one of Hong Kong’s 28 British Governors.
Date: Saturday 28th November 2026
Venue: The Allen Room, 1/F, St. Anne’s Church, 55 Dean Street, W1D 6AF
Time: 2:30 pm
Speaker: Graham Hutchings, Associate at Oxford University’s China Centre
Title: “Governor, Traveller, Scholar, Spy : Sir Cecil Clementi and the making of ‘Modern’ Hong Kong”
Lunch: An optional dim sum lunch beforehand at the Joy King Lau restaurant, 3 Leicester Street, London WC2H 7BL. Tel: 0207 437 1133. Lunch will begin at noon at a cost of £27 per person including Chinese tea and service.
Booking: Please book now with Florence on Florence.lkcan@gmail.com and say if you wish to join the lunch. Guests are always welcome at our lectures and lunches.
Lecture cost: £10 for members of Friends of East Asia, £12 for guests, to include refreshments after the talk. Free of charge to full-time students – please book in advance or on the day and bring your Student ID card to the lecture.
“Governor, Traveller, Scholar, Spy: Sir Cecil Clementi and the Making of ‘Modern’ Hong Kong”
In his talk, Graham Hutchings will introduce his new biography of Sir Cecil Clementi. Of Hong Kong’s 28 British governors, Clementi was the most intellectually accomplished, the most widely travelled in China, and probably the most fluent in written and spoken Chinese, especially Cantonese. He spent more than half of his 34-year career in Hong Kong, arriving as a government cadet at the close of 1899 and serving in a variety of positions in the following 13 years. He played an important part in the land settlement of the New Territories, the creation of Hong Kong University and the construction of the Kowloon-Canton Railway. He also published a translation of Chinese poetry and undertook an epic journey from Kashgar to Kowloon.
Clementi returned to Hong Kong as the 17th governor (1925-1930) when China’s National Revolution threatened British control of the territory. He responded by cultivating close ties with local Chinese elites as a means of defending Hong Kong’s ‘traditional’ way of life and shoring up British prestige. A man of extraordinary energy as well as ability, he nevertheless found himself out of tune with the times in China as well as the policies of the British government towards that country.
Graham Hutchings is an Associate at Oxford University’s China Centre and an Honorary Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. He was a foreign correspondent based first in Beijing and then Hong Kong. He was then Director of Analysis and later Managing Director at Oxford Analytica, the global analysis and advisory company. His previous books include China 1949: Year of Revolution.
Friends of East Asia