Then & Now | Life in post-war Hong Kong: a first-hand account by a famous Scottish author

Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie, prolific Scottish author of travel accounts, memoirs, novels and stage plays – some of which were turned into successful films – was a house­hold name across the English-speaking world in the first half of the 20th century, yet he is almost completely forgotten today.

Better known as Compton Mackenzie, most of his works became immediate best­sellers, including the novel Sinister Street (1913-14). The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett (1918) was made into a spectacularly unsuccessful Hollywood film in 1935, starring the other­wise bankable Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, and remained in print for decades. Whisky Galore (1947) was turned into a popular film, and The Monarch of the Glen (1941) was made into a well-received British television series (2000-05) nearly three decades after Mackenzie’s death.

International renown was the main rea­son Mackenzie was engaged by the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China – which, in 1969, merged with the Standard Bank of British South Africa to form Standard Chartered – to author its company history, Realms of Silver (1954). Commissioned for the institution’s centenary, it contains adequate historical detail to enable a general reader to understand the establishment and rise of a major financial institution.