Top gun Winchester shows no signs of slowing down

Simon Winchester returns to Hong Kong for this year's literary festival - at which he is due to double-act with his long-time guru Jan Morris - something of a new man.

He was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) last year, the print is still drying on his first entry in Who's Who, his book on one of the unsung heroes of China is due to be completed this summer before a motoring trip from London to Shanghai, and he will be accompanied by his new bride, former National Public Radio editor Setsuko Sato.

'We've known each other a long time and were married last January,' said Winchester from Barnhill, his 18th-century farmhouse in Massachusetts.

The past year has been an especially good one for the man occasionally dubbed The Dean of Disaster, a soubriquet that one imagines causes him to wince slightly.

Nuptials and public honours apart - although he said news of his OBE brought 'tears to my eyes' - his tale of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, A Crack in the Edge of the World, has sold well and been respectfully received, with the exception of an acerbic notice in The New York Times.

'You forget the good reviews, but you always remember the bad, and this was the worst ever,' Winchester said. 'He said he wanted to kick the book across the room, though he didn't really say why. I think he simply didn't like me.'

Nevertheless, Crack - which follows an earlier book on Krakatoa's eruption in 1883 - struck a chord with American readers, especially in the wake of the chaos caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Much of Winchester's appeal is that in relating a rattling good yarn, he also examines the bigger picture.

Winchester's forthcoming opus adopts a similarly panoramic viewpoint, covering the life and work of Joseph Needham, a Scottish biochemist who was also a nudist, vegetarian and communist, who liked playing the accordion and Morris dancing, and who conducted a 50-year affair with his Chinese language teacher Lu Gwei-djen.

Needham, also known as Li Yuese, worked as director of the Sino-British Science Co-operation Office in Chongqing in the 1940s, and after returning to Britain pioneered western recognition of China's scientific past with his encyclopedic work, Science and Civilisation in China. Central to Needham's research was the question of why China had never undergone an Industrial Revolution and thus had been eclipsed by development in the west.

'My book The Map that Changed the World was about geology, but primarily about its modern founder, William Smith. The Professor and the Madman told the story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, but focused on W. C. Minor, the lunatic of the title. So when I decided to do a book on the development of China, I thought it best to tell it from Needham's perspective.'

It is tempting to draw parallels between Needham and Winchester. Both of a scientific bent (Winchester trained as a geologist but switched careers after reading Morris' account of the 1953 Everest expedition) and men of widely varying interests (Winchester raises bees and chickens on his farm, maintains an interest in

ArtAsia Pacific magazine, and includes letterpress printing among his hobbies), both fell in love with Asian women.

Winchester, who is 62, is cautious about the comparison. 'I'm not sure I would go that far, but I certainly hope that I live until I'm 94, like Needham did.

Winchester is due to complete the Needham book at the end of June, and the following month he and Setsuko will leave London for China aboard a new Land Rover.

'Shanghai is not a chance destination, as I want to do a book about it. Amazingly enough, we ordered a takeaway not so long ago, and the Chinese man who delivered it - who'd taken the English name Gordon - was someone I'd filmed when I was making a documentary in Shanghai in the 1980s.

'I'd sponsored his visa to the [United] States, but we'd subsequently lost contact. Gordon's done well for himself - his delivery role is only a part-time job - and he told me that while 20 years ago his dream was to get to the US, now his dream is to return to Shanghai and enjoy its new prosperity.

'And I thought - what a marvellous way to start off my new book on the city.'

Simon Winchester appears on March14: Olympic House, 7pm, HK$160; March16: DotCod, Prin-ce's Building, 7pm, HK$700 (wine and dinner included); March17: Fringe Theatre, 10pm, HK$150