About me
I am an English writer and an ex-British Army Officer who has settled in Hong Kong, where I conduct business, mostly for and with the resident Nepalese community through our Company, Gurkha International (Hong Kong) Ltd. We use the city as a base to pursue our dream of opening employment in the international maritime industry to the people of Nepal. Through our sister company in Kathmandu, our Company, Gurkha International Manpower Services Ltd, recruits Nepalese men and women as crew on board cruise liners worldwide.
My writing includes five published books as well as a series of articles and reviews for the Asian Review of Books, the Hong Kong edition of China Daily, the LGBT community site Fridae.asia and other journals. In Hong Kong, I am Vice Chairman of the Hong Kong and China Branch of the British Legion, Vice Chairman of the Asia-Africa Committee of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, founder and Advisor of the Hong Kong Branch of the 6th Queen Elizabeth's Own Gurkha Rifles Association, and a member of the Foreign Correspondents' Club. In London, I am a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and a member of the Oriental Club.
Writing, specifically being co-founder and Coordinator of Hong Kong's Tongzhi Literary Group, brought me to activism, and I have been the Secretary of Hong Kong's Pink Alliance (the Tongzhi Community Joint Meeting) since 2008. I am the compiler of the LGBT World History (a chronology from the 27th Century BCE to today) that is housed on the Pink Alliance website here.
Annually, I had the great pleasure of moderating sessions for the Hong Kong International Literary Festival for many years after 2006.
My next project is an account of the relationship between the English novelist E.M. Forster and India, which is currently entitled Developing the Heart.
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My book, A Death in Hong Kong, was published by City University Press in March 2018, and had the great good fortune to win the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong's 2017 Hong Kong History Book Prize. You can find details of this on its own page.
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My most recent book, Developing the Heart; EM Foster and India, was also published by City University Press, in 2022.