The Hong Kong Diaries

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Patten Lecture: China and Europe in a less certain world". Blavatnik School of Government . Retrieved 28 March 2023. East and West: The Last Governor of Hong Kong on Power, Freedom and the Future. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-3337-4787-2. In 1990, John Major made Patten Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Chairman of the Conservative Party, with responsibility for organising the Conservative Party's re-election campaign for the upcoming general election. As party chairman, he was widely considered to be the main architect of the somewhat unexpected Conservative victory at the 1992 general election. However, he lost his marginal seat of Bath to the Liberal Democrat candidate Don Foster at that election. Patten's defeat was attributed to factors such as the Poll Tax. [16] Governor of Hong Kong: 1992–1997 [ edit ] As for the triviality of diary entries, it too has a point. In the beginning, Patten was observing and groping for his elbow room, which he would come to understand was proportional to how tight Beijing's grip was. Mired in the machinated disarray created by the provisional legislature, he complained more and joked less. The transformation and wearing out of a new governor can be read between the lines. In Patten's diaries we see everyone from Mother Teresa to Margaret Thatcher passing through the governor's living room ... Eschewing the feathered hat, the uniform and all the other flummery that goes with governing an outpost of the British empire, he plunges into a series of walkabouts, holds public meetings, looks for ways of redistributing some wealth and makes no secret of his sympathy for the democrats. Chris Mullin, Spectator

Lord Patten spent much of his time in Hong Kong struggling against British officials and members of the local elite who believed it was not worth trying to push China to accept more democracy in pre-handover Hong Kong-much less expanding it without China's approval. Some of the most riveting detail in this rich volume relates to these tensions. ... The author's entertaining language brings these diaries to life. Economist Patten receiving the union flag after it was lowered for the last time at Government House - the governor’s official residence - during a farewell ceremony in Hong Kong in 1997. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty ImagesChristopher Francis Patten, Baron Patten of Barnes, KG , CH , PC ( Chinese: 彭定康; [2] born 12 May 1944) is a British politician who was the 28th and last Governor of Hong Kong from 1992 to 1997 and Chairman of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1992. He was made a life peer in 2005 and has been Chancellor of the University of Oxford since 2003. He is one of the two living former governors of Hong Kong. The other is David Wilson, Baron Wilson of Tillyorn. Because the 2022 polemic is much shorter than the diaries and is also more current, some readers may turn there first. But the journal entries provide a foundation for understanding why the circumspect optimism of 1997 has been so tragically confounded under Beijing’s later rule.

minutely observe[s] how China broke its promises - first insidiously and gradually and then openly and suddenly - and the impact on the lives of Hong Kongers ... Patten's diaries of his frustrating yet rewarding stint as governor cover the years from 1992 to the 1997 handover ... [he] is a genial and self-deprecating companion through the years leading up to the handover ... In the course of his diaries, Patten argues convincingly that for Britain or any other country to abandon liberal principles and yield to the Chinese Communist party's demands at every opportunity brings neither political nor commercial benefits. The trade and investment statistics he cites from the final decades of British rule do indeed suggest there is little correlation between grovelling and real rewards for business. Victor Mallet, Financial Times In 2016, in the wake of a student movement to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes from a college in Oxford, as had happened in South Africa, Patten said that Oxford students who did not like Cecil Rhodes should "think about being educated elsewhere". [28] Sir John Bowring ( Governor of Hong Kong 1854–1859) and Sir John Pope Hennessy ( Governor of Hong Kong 1877–1882) – a Conservative MP before he entered the Colonial Service – were predecessors. On Kate, Patten wrote, “I flew up to Newcastle to see Kate. She is living in what seems a very jolly hall of residence surrounded by loud and cheerful friends” (p.22). “I took Kate out to a restaurant down on the wharf in the centre of Newcastle, Number 21. We had a terrific meal and she’s really good company.” (p.83). Elsewhere, The Diaries reports that “Kate phoned up this morning to tell us she’s had a car crash near Darlington. Thank heavens she’s fine, but clearly very shaken. We are pretty shaken ourselves.” (p.131). On Laura, Patten said, “her course has started well and she’s enjoyed the first three days, but she’s missing us and had a bit of a cry on the phone” (p.67). University of Ulster News Release – UU Unveils Summer Honorary Graduates". News.ulster.ac.uk. 28 February 2005. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016 . Retrieved 30 June 2010.

Patten submitted his letter of resignation as BBC Trust Chairman to the Secretary of State on 6 May 2014; citing health reasons following his heart bypass surgery on 28 April. [32] BBC Trust Vice Chairman Diane Coyle took over as Acting Chairman until the appointment of a new chairman. He returned to sit with the Conservative party in the House of Lords in September of that year. a b Marlin, John Tepper (28 April 2013). "REUNION: Europe in Madrid – Lord Patten". The Oxbridge Pursuivant. blogspot . Retrieved 28 March 2023. Patten grew up in an Irish Catholic family in west London, the son of an unsuccessful music publisher whose forebears had come to England from County Roscommon, Ireland. [4] Patten's father, Frank, dropped out [5] of university to become a jazz-drummer, later, a popular-music publisher. Frank and his mother Joan sent him to a Catholic primary school, Our Lady of the Visitation, in Greenford, and later awarded a scholarship [5] [6] to the independent St Benedict's School in Ealing, west London, where he won an exhibition [1] [7] to read Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford. wonderfully waspish, fascinating and rude in spades about all the people who deserve nothing less. Stephen Vines, Literary Review