In 1954, eighteen years before Nixon's momentous visit to China, scores of European delegations set off for Beijing, in response to Prime Minister Chou En-Lai's invitation to "come and see" the New China and to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Communist victory. In this delightfully eclectic book--part comedy, part travelogue, and part cultural history--Patrick Wright tells the story of the remarkable Britons who made this journey, including former Prime Minister Clement Attlee; dapper and self-important philosopher A. J. Ayer; the brilliant young artist-reporter Paul Hogarth; poet and novelist Rex Warner (a former Marxist who had just married a Rothschild); and the infuriatingly self-obsessed Stanley Spencer, who emerges as the unlikely hero of the story.
