Human dynamo who powered Hong Kong

LORD Kadoorie spent his last Sunday just as he had spent most of his Sundays in Hong Kong - enjoying lunch at his comfortable granite house at Boulder Lodge in the New Territories with family and friends, reading the newspapers and discoursing on current affairs.

Although confined to a wheelchair for the last few weeks of his life, the man fittingly described as a human dynamo was as mentally alert, incisive and talkative as ever.

Over a dish of curry with his wife Muriel, his son Michael, his brother Horace, his son-in-law Ron McAulay, his colleague Sir William Stones and his friend Sir Jack Cater, the pioneer of power in Hong Kong espoused his views on the future of the territory after 1997 in as eloquent and articulate a fashion as any of his speeches at the height of his powers.

Typical of his hands-on approach to life, the peer even passed a proprietorial eye over the China Light and Power offices in Mongkok on Tuesday, complaining just in passing that he felt a little cold.

He died yesterday afternoon at the age of 94 at St Teresa's Hospital, Kowloon, with his great ambition, to stand with Deng Xiaoping at the opening of the Daya Bay nuclear power station, unfulfilled. He probably missed that opening by just a few days.

Lord Kadoorie's life was the stuff of fiction. Packed with drama, struggle, achievement, loss, achievement again against the odds, it could be said he lived the life of several men. He was certainly one of the territory's greatest taipans and an inspiration to the business and political community.