Hermit of Peking : the hidden life of Sir Edmund Backhouse

Hugh Trevor-Roper

It all began when Hugh Trevor-Roper acquired the voluminous memoirs of Sir Edmund Backhouse, up till then known only as a distinguished Chinese scholar who had lived quietly until his death in 1944. The memoirs depicted a very different person - a man who said that he had been 'intimate' with many nobles, from Lord Rosebery to Verlaine, and whose lovers had included the Dowager Empress of China. In fact, they were so fantastic that the author felt obliged to discover all he could about the man who had written them: and what he reveals here is the story of one of the most outrageous forgers, confidence tricksters and eccentrics of the century.