Cottrell set out to write the story of how China demanded the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, and how Britain ultimately acquiesced. He describes the still largely hidden story of the diplomacy, and of the undiplomatic exchanges, that played out from 1981 to 1992 between Britain and China. As Cottrell points out, Hong Kong's situation was unique in that it was a rare instance of a former colony being handed over to another power, rather than being granted independence. The people of Hong Kong had very little say in how events unfolded, being initially kept in the dark. Cottrell describes how the mood of the population evolved from feelings of bewilderment, betrayal and anger towards an ultimate resignation to their fate.

The author closes his story in October 1992, just after the arrival in Hong Kong of the last Governor, Chris Patten. By then most of the arrangements for the handover had been settled. However, the brutal suppression of democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in June 1989 had injected a note of particular alarm in those interested in fostering democracy in Hong Kong leading up to and subsequent to the handover to the China. The book ends with a remark from Lee Kuan Yew (the Singapore statesman) to the new Governor, that he expected "a real scrap" (fight in British parlance) to occur over the fate of Hong Kong in the last five years of British rule. And Chris Patten, a politician rather than a diplomat, was the man most likely to take the fight to the Chinese.

Curiously then of course the book ends, but the story did not. The handover occurred, as did the fight between Patten and Beijing leading up to it. As a result, Hong Kong retained much of its essential character, but very little by way of democratic institutions. As the Chinese pointed out, Britain had ruled Hong Kong as a virtual dictatorship for 146 years. The Chinese saw the very limited attempts by the British to foster democracy in Hong Kong in the final ten years of its rule as an ambit to spoil the Chinese takeover, rather than an attempt to actually do something for the benefit of the inhabitants of Hong Kong. But for that story you need to move onto another book, and one of the best is Jonathan Dimbleby's 'The Last Governor' which picks up the story with Chris Patten's arrival in Hong Kong in 1992.

It might be noted that while Dimbleby describes Cottrell's book as meticulous and balanced, he doesn't claim as much for his own, given that he has a great deal of sympathy for Patten's efforts to make up for Britain's neglect of the Hong Kong Chinese. Dimbleby, to his credit, draws the readers attention to Mark Roberti's 'The Fall of Hong Kong: China's Triumph and Britain's Betrayal' for a much more anti-British and anti-Colonial view.

But returning to this book, I recommend it highly. Indeed it is a 'must' for anyone particularly interested in the final years of Hong Kong under British rule, or indeed in diplomacy generally or the antecedents of the fledgling democratic movement in Chinese Hong Kong. Cottrell writes very well, rolling out the facts and shifting viewpoints with an easy economy of effort, conveying the drama and significance of events that in those days were - and still are - State secrets. ( )