A Sort of Memoir

First Confession

Most politicians write autobiographies to 'set the record straight'. This is a different sort of memoir. Following his life as a self-confessed 'wet European' from parliament to Hong Kong and beyond, Chris Patten creates a meditation on personal and political identity which, in an age of simplification, shows the complexities of both. 
 
'A defence of liberal conservatism ... If old-style centrism is to stage a comeback and reason to supplant stridency and authoritarianism, be it in west or east, the moderates can wave Patten's book on their way to their barricades' Jonathan Fenby, Financial Times 
 
'Vivid, very well-written, First Confession joins the highest tier of recent works by British politicians' Paschal Donohoe, Irish Times 
 
'Draws on his experience of four controversial institutions - the Tory party, the Vatican, the Chinese government and the BBC - to swell the tiny list of intelligent and cultured memoirs by front-line politicians' Mark Lawson, New Statesman, Books of the Year

Draws on his experience of four controversial institutions - the Tory party, the Vatican, the Chinese government and the BBC - to swell the tiny list of intelligent and cultured memoirs by front-line politicians

A defence of liberal conservatism ... If old-style centrism is to stage a comeback and reason to supplant stridency and authoritarianism, be it in west or east, the moderates can wave Patten's book on their way to their barricades

Engagingly frank, beefily pugnacious ...                     ... he writes stirringly

Vivid, very well-written, First Confession joins the highest tier of recent works by British politicians

Chris Patten is currently Chancellor of Oxford University. As a British MP (1979-92) he served as Minister for Overseas Development, Secretary of State for the Environment and Chairman of the Conservative Party, being described afterwards as 'the best Tory Prime Minister we never had' (Observer). He is well known for being the last Governor of Hong Kong (1992-7), about which he wrote in East and West (1998). Both that and his most recent book, Not Quite the Diplomat: Home Truths about World Affairs (2005), were No. 1 international bestsellers. In 2008 he wrote What Next? Surviving the Twenty-First Century. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1998 and a life peer in 2005.

Surviving the Twenty-first Century

What Next?

While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practised now than three or four thousand years ago.

Chris Patten, Chancellor of Oxford and Newcastle Universities, was until recently European Commissioner for External Relations. A former MP, he is best known for being the last Governor of Hong Kong and at one time, Chairman of the Conservative Party. His previous publications include East and West (1998) and Not Quite the Diplomat (2005).

Globalisation, energy, international crime, Weapons of Mass Destruction, nuclear proliferation, small arms proliferation, international drugs trafficking, climate change, water shortage, migration, epidemic disease, the fraying of the nation state: the list of challenges facing our world is itself proliferating rapidly, and nobody seems to have much of a grip on what is going on. Digesting vast amounts of information from a multiplicity of sources, and drawing on his experience at the highest levels of national and international politics, Chris Patten analyses what we know in each of these areas and argues how in each of them we could get somewhere we might want to be. Very little, he says, has turned out as we might have expected twenty years ago, but there is plenty we can still do. 
 
Readers of Patten's previous books will know what a penetrating analyst and engaging writer he is. This is his most ambitious and impressive yet.

Home Truths About World Affairs

Not Quite the Diplomat

Part memoir, part remedy for the state we're in, with liberal sprinklings of common sense, Chris Patten's Not Quite the Diplomat is a frank and funny book from a very outspoken politician. 
 
 After spending several years in the thick of international events, Chris Patten has seen rather a lot of the world - and the people who run it. And now he's free from the bonds of diplomacy, he doesn't have to be quite so careful about what he says. 
 
 Here he gives us his forthright views on everything from the Tories' downfall to America's empire, from whether Blair has any political convictions to why Britain should start liking the French. 
 
 'Masterly, elegant, sprightly, wry ... the best political reading of the year' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;James Naughtie, The Times Books of the Year 
 
 'A garnering of rich personal experience ... Frank and vivid ... without betraying any confidences or relationships of trust (Sir Christopher Meyer, please note)' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;The Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year 
 
 'Elegant, warm, witty, stylish and readable ... If politics were sane, appointments to ministerial rank anywhere would be conditional on reading, digesting, understanding and acting upon the wisdom of this book' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Independent 
 
 'Patten writes with wit, elegance and passion, showing a candour and courage uncommon among politicians' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Sunday Telegraph 
 
 Chris Patten is currently Chairman of the BBC Trust, and Chancellor of Oxford and Newcastle Universities. He is well known for being the last Governor of Hong Kong 1992-97, about which he wrote in East and West (1998). Both that and his most recent book, Not Quite the Diplomat: Home Truths about World Affairs (2005), were international best-sellers.

Chris Patten, Chancellor of Oxford and Newcastle universities, was until recently European Commissioner for External Relations. A former MP, he has also worked as the last Governor of Hong Kong, and Chairman of the Conservative Party. His previous publications include East and West.

Not Quite the Diplomat describes what has been happening in Britain, Europe and the world since 1997 from the perspective of one at the heart of international events. In examining how we got to where we are, he writes candidly about many of the major players and what happened behind closed doors. In arguing about where we should be, he writes with the directness of a man freed at last from the bonds of diplomatic restraint. 
 
Will the British still be trying to work out who we are and what we want to be as the world moves on? How far can Europe expand - and is Europe all a terrible mistake or where our destiny lies? Does the old, fractured Western alliance still have the time and the will to shape the world before the rise of India and China? Chris Patten's answers to these questions are pungent and devastatingly well informed. No recent book by a politician of any political persuasion has been so engaging, so outspoken - and often so funny. If Chris Patten is no longer the diplomat, it is the readers of this book who are the beneficiaries.

Chris Patten

Patten's diaries over the next five years describe in detail his day-to-day battles with the Chinese ... a terrific tale, one that will appeal not just to Sinologists but to all historians, since it is effectively a record of the end days of an empire ... At times, the diaries read like a novel ... His chatty style makes the[m] an easy read

wonderfully waspish, fascinating and rude in spades about all the people who deserve nothing less.

Patten has now published his diaries of five tumultuous years in office, from 1992 to 1997, recording battles against the comrades, the tycoons, the doubters in the cabinet and mandarins everywhere. As you might expect, they are urbane, sardonic and quotable ... his plan was to extend the vote and to democratise local government. The magnates were aghast, the diplomats shuddered and the Chinese, who loathed such notions, ostracised the governor after one round of talks in Beijing ... Yet it was a brave and decent thing to try, an endeavour recorded for posterity in these pages.

the diaries themselves, kept from the time of his appointment in April 1992 to the handover just over five years later, have not been seen before and make for consistently good reading ... Patten also has something powerful to say about Hong Kong today. This takes the form of a passionate polemical essay, written as a postscript to the diaries, about China's increasingly brutal sabotage of the Hong Kong deals. Patten brings terrific energy to his denunciation of Xi Jinping's crackdown on the territory. ... Twenty-five years on, with the global order turning more nationalist and inward, the diaries are a witness that despite his limited achievements, it was Patten who called the outcome more accurately and more honourably than they did.

As an insider's account, The Hong Kong Diaries is filled with that daily sense of grappling with a multi-headed hydra ... There is an inescapable poignancy to reading this diary in 2022: it is a snapshot of a unique moment at the end of empire, and a now fading picture of an extraordinary society that flourished in its brief moment of freedom.

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.

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.

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.

In The Hong Kong Diaries Chris Patten details his struggle as the last governor of Hong Kong to energise the dying days of British rule. Patten's conviction that planting the seed of democracy would make Hong Kong more resilient after the handover to China will long be debated by historians, and this book will be an essential source. But it is also to be treasured for the brilliant and fierce concluding essay on China's recent crackdown which has destroyed Hong Kong's way of life. As Patten says, 'Hong Kong's fight is our fight'.

The Hong Kong Diaries ... details his persistent but ultimately failed efforts to secure the continuance of Hong Kong's freedoms ... Despite Mr. Patten's best efforts, Hong Kong became the canary in the mine shaft, showing what happens when the Chinese Communist Party is allowed to get its way.

In June 1992 Chris Patten went to Hong Kong as the last British governor, to try to prepare it not - as other British colonies over the decades - for independence, but for handing back in 1997 to the Chinese, from whom most of its territory had been leased 99 years previously. Over the next five years he kept this diary, which describes in detail how Hong Kong was run as a British colony and what happened as the handover approached. The book gives unprecedented insights into negotiating with the Chinese, about how the institutions of democracy in Hong Kong were (belatedly) strengthened and how Patten sought to ensure that a strong degree of self-government would continue after 1997. Unexpectedly, his opponents included not only the Chinese themselves, but some British businessmen and civil service mandarins upset by Patten's efforts, for whom political freedom and the rule of law in Hong Kong seemed less important than keeping on the right side of Beijing. The book concludes with an account of what has happened in Hong Kong since the handover, a powerful assessment of recent events and Patten's reflections on how to deal with China - then and now.

Chris Patten

Praise for The Hong Kong Diaries

Patten's diaries over the next five years describe in detail his day-to-day battles with the Chinese ... a terrific tale, one that will appeal not just to Sinologists but to all historians, since it is effectivel ...

wonderfully waspish, fascinating and rude in spades about all the people who deserve nothing less.

Patten has now published his diaries of five tumultuous years in office, from 1992 to 1997, recording battles against the comrades, the tycoons, the doubters in the cabinet and mandarins everywhere. As you might exp ...

Patten's diaries over the next five years describe in detail his day-to-day battles with the Chinese ... a terrific tale, one that will appeal not just to Sinologists but to all historians, since it is effectivel ...

wonderfully waspish, fascinating and rude in spades about all the people who deserve nothing less.

Patten has now published his diaries of five tumultuous years in office, from 1992 to 1997, recording battles against the comrades, the tycoons, the doubters in the cabinet and mandarins everywhere. As you might exp ...

Patten's diaries over the next five years describe in detail his day-to-day battles with the Chinese ... a terrific tale, one that will appeal not just to Sinologists but to all historians, since it is effectivel ...

wonderfully waspish, fascinating and rude in spades about all the people who deserve nothing less.

Patten has now published his diaries of five tumultuous years in office, from 1992 to 1997, recording battles against the comrades, the tycoons, the doubters in the cabinet and mandarins everywhere. As you might exp ...

Books by Chris Patten

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