Tai-Pan

'Intensely readable and exciting' Sunday Telegraph Set in the turbulent days of the founding of Hong Kong in the 1840s, Tai-Pan is the story of Dirk Struan, the ruler - the Tai-Pan - of the most powerful trading company in the Far East. He is also a pirate, an opium smuggler, and a master manipulator of men. This is the story of his fight to establish himself and his dynasty as the undisputed masters of the Orient. 'Packed with action . . . gaudy and flamboyant with blood and sin, treachery and conspiracy, sex and murder . . . grand entertainment' New York Times

James Clavell, the son of a Royal Navy family, was educated in Portsmouth before, as a young artillery officer, he was captured by the Japanese at the Fall of Singapore. After the war Clavell worked in the film industry producing a number of successful films including To Sir with Love. He died in 1994.