 Anthony Grey, through no fault or merit of his own, became the focus of worldwide headlines in 1967 when he was seized as a hostage by Mao Tse-tungs's Red Guards. Held in solitary confinement in Beijing for two years at the height of the Cultural Revolution, he became arguably the most publicised prisoner of the Cold War era and the first international political hostage of modern times.
Following the ordeal he went on to establish himself as an international historical novelist focussing particularly on the Far East. His books acclaimed for their meticulous attention to accurate historical detail, have to date been translated into 17 languages and he is perhaps best known for his outstanding epic novel Saigon, published in 1982. The novel won the author great critical acclaim across the USA and Canada as well as in Europe, Australia, South Africa and the Far East.
Compared to Tolstoy's War and Peace by the San Francisco Chronicle ('This masterwork could be said to be the War and Peace of our age'), and dubbed 'a novel of terrible importance' by the Kansas City Star, it was also highly recommended by library journals as a High School and University study course book for 'its perceptive portrayal of an important period of American history'. The novel was significantly later adopted as a course book in such diverse establishments as the US Naval Academy at Annapolis and the People's Army Defense University in Hanoi.
Early on after his release from China and subsequent return to England in late 1969, Mr Grey wrote Hostage in Peking, an account of his incarceration that reviewers praised for both its human qualities and its contribution to the historical understanding of the enigmatic Cultural Revolution that convulsed China for a decade. Still widely read as a classic account of life as a hostage - and especially each time a new hostage crisis arises - the book on first publication became a bestseller in seven countries, including USA, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Norway and Australia. An updated edition of this book has been published by Tagman entitled Hostage in Peking Plus. A book of short stories which the author wrote secretly whilst a hostage is also republished by Tagman entitled What is the Universe In? Mr Grey was honoured as Journalist of the Year in the United Kingdom in 1970 for his reporting on his Peking ordeal and was also made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) by Queen Elizabeth.
In writing his second major novel Peking (1988), tracing China's history from the Long March of the 1930s to the death of Mao in 1976, the author drew fully on his inside experience of that country during its most cataclysmic modern upheaval. On publication, this novel was also highly praised by critics around the world. To complete a broad picture of how East and West clashed in Asia in modern times he decided to chronicle the struggle for supremacy between Japan, America and Europe in a further trilogy.
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