AT BOARDING SCHOOL in the UK in the mid-1970s, a fellow pupil asked me, after I had told him I was born in Beijing, whether that meant I was Chinese. “Oh yes,” I said, “that means I possess a Chinese soul.” OK, in my defence, I was nine. My father (Alan Donald) was a British diplomat, posted to Beijing three times during his career, and ended up British ambassador there in the late 1980s. I don’t remember anything of China as a baby – we left in 1966 at the start of the Cultural Revolution, when I was one – but my family returned to Hong Kong in the mid-1970s, when my father was appointed political adviser to in the UK in the mid-1970s, a fellow pupil asked me, after I had told him I was born in Beijing, whether that meant I was Chinese. “Oh yes,” I said, “that means I possess a Chinese soul.” OK, in my defence, I was nine. My father (Alan Donald) was a British diplomat, posted to Beijing three times during his career, and ended up British ambassador there in the late 1980s. I don’t remember anything of China as a baby – we left in 1966 at the start of the Cultural Revolution, when I was one – but my family returned to Hong Kong in the mid-1970s, when my father was appointed political adviser to the governor, Murray MacLehose , and my memories of that time and place are vivid.

Baby Angus with his brothers Jamie (left) and John, and the family cook, in Beijing, in 1965.