It was an adventurous, rewarding life but something was missing. “I remembered the plays I had written at school and that long buried ambition also to be a story teller. I began to write up my diaries of my desert excursions, attempting to publish a book on my camel expedition. That idea failed, but I had picked up a writing habit on weekends and public holidays and in 1997 I started my first novel, loosely based on my family heritage in China—which I finished in 2002.” In 2003 it was published by Hodder & Stoughton as ‘The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure’.
While continuing to live in Beijing working for Jardines, he now spends several months of the year in Italy where he bought a house for writing. Several more books followed. ‘The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure’, set in the Boxer Rebellion, became the first in a trilogy.