The Hong Kong Diaries

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I grew up in Hong Kong and for some reason have always remembered the name of the last Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, even though I was not really interested in politics at the time. I remember driving by the Governor's house which was not far from where I lived. As an insider's account, The Hong Kong Diaries is filled with that daily sense of grappling with a multi-headed hydra ... There is an inescapable poignancy to reading this diary in 2022: it is a snapshot of a unique moment at the end of empire, and a now fading picture of an extraordinary society that flourished in its brief moment of freedom. Isabel Hilton, Times Literary Supplement William Westerman Pathfinders awards to North America". Balliol College, University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 3 January 2023 . Retrieved 28 March 2023. The original Pathfinders programme at Balliol was started in 1955 by Bill Coolidge (Balliol 1924). A major event covered by a principled professional. Those researching the period would find telling notes about key politicians engaged or witnessing the last few years of Britain governorship over HK. Though hard it is to go through what is literally a diary, last 2 chapters summarise the core belief system. Patten has become a kind of living reminder of that shift on the right. He was the architect of Major’s 1992 election victory, built on a belief that, post-Thatcher, the party must be “tolerant, efficient and generous-spirited”. Those are three values for the scrapbook. Had he not lost his own seat in Bath in that election, partly because he was associated with the poll tax, he would have become, at 48, chancellor of the exchequer. His subsequent career has been a tour of duty of threatened institutions and imperial relics, the more grown-up version of Portillo on a train. He was, of course, Britain’s last governor of Hong Kong, lampooned in Private Eye as the grand poobah, before the handover to China in 1997. He followed that up with the job of which he is most proud – establishing a new, non-sectarian police force in Northern Ireland, as part of the Good Friday agreement. He was then an EU commissioner, partly responsible for the union’s foreign policy. Then chairman of the BBC Trust, fighting a rearguard action against cuts. For the last 19 years he has been chancellor of Oxford University. In each of those roles, he has been pitted not against the left, but mostly against the Daily Mail and the ideologues and nut jobs in his own party.

krystalyang38 (22 September 2020). "Who is Lord Chris Patten?". The Millennial Source Ltd . Retrieved 28 March 2023.University roles and elevation to the peerage [ edit ] Patten in ceremonial dress as the Chancellor of the University of Oxford China's 'nervous' Xi risks new Cold War, last Hong Kong governor says". Reuters. 30 May 2020. The West, he said, should stop being naive about Xi, who has served as General Secretary of the Communist Party since 2012. Sale, Jonathan. "Passed/Failed: An Education in the Life of Lord Patten, last governor of Hong Kong and University Chancellor". The Independent . Retrieved 19 July 2018. I only went to the Oxford Union once. What turned me on to politics was getting a travelling scholarship to the USA. In New York, I got involved in the mayoral campaign of John Lindsay, a liberal Republican who wound up a Democrat, and I got the bug

The Doon School Weekly" (PDF). Doonschool.com. 10 October 2009 . Retrieved 17 March 2015. [ permanent dead link] Yet Patten is also very interested in maintaining his family life. The Diaries is full of sentiments and passions for his wife (Lavender) and three daughters (Kate, Laura and Alice). Patten dedicates his book to Lavender. He states that Lavender “gave up her career so that [he] could go to Hong Kong”. Lavender also helped him “hugely in his work as Governor,” and loved Hong Kong as much as he did. Indeed, The Diaries reveals Patten’s deep love for his three daughters, yet grounded in his views of individualism, independence, self-reliance, and venturing. Patten let his three children decide whether they lived in Hong Kong or not (pp.19-20).Chris Patten grew up in an Irish Catholic family in West London and was the son of a popular music publisher. After reading Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford and graduating in 1965, Patten joined the Conservative Party the following year. He served as Minister of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (1986-1989), Secretary of State for the Environment (1989-1990), and Chairman of the Conservative Party (1990-1992). He was the last British governor of Hong Kong from 1992 to 1997.