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Paul French

Biography

Paul French

Paul French was born in London and lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. His book, MIDNIGHT IN PEKING, was a New York Times bestseller and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. He received the Mystery Writers’ of America Edgar award for Best Fact Crime and a Crime Writers’ Association (UK) Dagger award for nonfiction. His book, CITY OF DEVILS: A Shanghai Noir, received much praise with The Economist writing, "…in Mr French the city has its champion storyteller." Both MIDNIGHT IN PEKING and CITY OF DEVILS are currently in development for film.

Paul French

Books by Paul French

The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City
by Paul French - History, Nonfiction

In the early 1920s, the former Emperor of China, Puyi, and his Empress, Wanrong, were sequestered inside Peking’s ancient Forbidden City. Surrounded by scheming courtiers, fawning servants, and corrupt eunuchs, Puyi did not know from one day to the next whether he would experience restoration, expulsion or assassination. THE LAST EMPEROR OF CHINA delves into the final years of the Manchu Dynasty, beginning with China’s last royal wedding. Paul French calls upon previously unpublished letters from the Emperor’s tutor and the diary of Wanrong’s English teacher, which shed a new light on the final days of China’s last dynasty before the imperial court’s brutal expulsion. THE LAST EMPEROR OF CHINA is also the story of the ancient citadel itself: the Forbidden City, a haven prohibited to all except the imperial family and their court.

Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson
by Paul French - History, Nonfiction

Before she was the Duchess of Windsor, Bessie Wallis Warfield was Mrs. Wallis Spencer, wife of Earl “Win” Spencer, a US Navy aviator. From humble beginnings in Baltimore, she rose to marry a man who gave up his throne for her. But what made Wallis Spencer, Navy Wife, the woman who could become the Duchess of Windsor? The answers lie in her one-year sojourn in China. In her memoirs, Wallis described her time in China as her “Lotus Year,” referring to Homer’s Lotus Eaters, a group living in a state of dreamy forgetfulness, never to return home. Though faced with challenges, Wallis came to appreciate traditional Chinese aesthetics. China molded her in terms of her style and provided her with friendships that lasted a lifetime. But that “Lotus Year” also would be used later to damn her in the eyes of the British Establishment.

City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai
by Paul French - History, Nonfiction

1930s Shanghai was a haven for outlaws from all over the world: a place where pasts could be forgotten, fascism and communism outrun, names invented, and fortunes made --- and lost. “Lucky” Jack Riley was the most notorious of those outlaws. An ex–U.S. Navy boxing champion, he escaped from prison and rose to become the Slots King of Shanghai. “Dapper” Joe Farren --- a Jewish boy who fled Vienna’s ghetto --- ruled the nightclubs. In 1940, Lucky Jack and Dapper Joe bestrode the Shanghai Badlands like kings, while all around the Solitary Island was poverty, starvation and war. They thought they ruled Shanghai, but the city had other ideas. This is the story of their rise to power, their downfall, and the trail of destruction left in their wake.

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China
by Paul French - Nonfiction, True Crime

Historian and China expert Paul French at last uncovers the truth behind the notorious murder of a young Englishwoman, and offers a rare glimpse of the last days of colonial Peking.