Paul French lifts veil on final months of China’s last emperor in the Forbidden City
It is not the first biography of China’s Puyi, but Paul French’s latest book brings with it a feminine voice of modernity and fully exploits its place in the ‘doomed-monarchy’ sub-genre
On a recent afternoon, Paul French – British author, broadcaster, blogger but definitely not, as he always stresses, an academic – is explaining his technique.
“My trick, which I suppose is reasonably successful, is to try and write Chinese history linked to a genre that lots and lots of people read, [because] there’s that many people” – his finger and thumb indicate a space so narrow you’d hardly be able to pass a sliver of paper between them – “who read books on China. And there’s this many people” – his hands convey near-ceiling height – “who’ll read about true crime or gangsters or royalty.”
Such an approach has, indeed, made him reasonably, and internationally, successful. In 2011, he published Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China, which made it onto the New York Times’ bestseller list, won both the 2013 Edgar Award for “Best Fact Crime” in the United States and Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association’s “ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction”, and was named “International Success of the Year” at the 2012 Australian Book Industry Awards.
In 2018, his City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir was a Kirkus Reviews’ “Best Book of the Year”. In 2024, Her Lotus Year: China, The Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson received much coverage and quotably upbeat reviews (“Her Lotus Year stays in the mind as a bright, shining, lively snapshot,” says The Spectator. “Delightful to read.”).
Now, it’s the turn of Puyi in The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City, which falls into a royalty subgenre that French calls “doomed monarchy”.