About Noble House, the Novel

This Week’s Film: Noble House

Cuisine: Hong Kong

Noble House is based on the 1981 novel of the same name by James Clavell. At over 1,000 pages, the story takes place in Hong Kong over the course of a single week in November 1963. It tells the story of Ian Dunross, a business tycoon who has just been elevated to the status of ?Tai Pan,? which means ?absolute authority.?

His trading company, Struan?s, known in Hong Kong financial circles as ?The Noble House,? is struggling financially and is therefore prey to hostile takeover by archrival Quillan Gornt, while American financier Lincoln Bartlett plays both ends against the middle. The novel?s sub-plots also include the Hong Kong underworld, Chinese communists, Taiwanese nationalists, the KGB and MI6, not to mention a high-stakes kidnapping and several sexual liaisons.

The novel is loosely based on several real-life companies and characters. Struan?s is a fictitious representation of Asian trading company Jardine Matheson, and Rothwell-Gornt is based on Butterfield and Swire (now Swire Pacific). The Ian Dunross character is thought to be a composite of Sir Hugh David MacEwen Barton and Sir Michael Herries, while Quillan Gornt represents John Kidston Swire and William Charles Goddard Knowles.

Although the Noble House mini-series is regarded as a fair representation of the novel, it was updated to take place in the 1980s, and therefore the historical timeline and American-Asian political influences were significantly altered.

My Noble House review will be posted at the end of the week, along with my Hong Kong recipes.