My first visit to Hong Kong was in 1958, when I spent a week or so there at the beginning of June as external examiner in chemistry at the University of Hong Kong. While there I had the good fortune to be the guest of Sir Lindsay and Lady Ride. Sir Lindsay was Vice-Chancellor of the University and he and his wife May were popular and respected members of the Hong Kong community. Sir Lindsay had a distinguished war record as commander of the British Army Aid Group in China, while his wife had been prominent for her community work while an inmate of the Japanese internment camp at Stanley Bay during the period of hostilities. That short stay in Hong Kong in 1958 established a friend- ship with Sir Lindsay which lasted until his untimely death in 1976 and with his wife May which endures to this day. From 1958 onwards my wife and I met the Rides in various places at international university functions, and visited them in Hong Kong in 1965 and again in 1970, when my youngest daughter settled temporarily in Hong Kong and was, for a time, employed by Rediffusion Television Ltd. (RTV). Thereafter, our visits to Hong Kong became more frequent, and we gradually built up quite a wide circle of friends in the colony. During the seventies I believe I met and was introduced on one or more social occasions to Noel Croucher, who was also a friend of the Rides, but I have no clear re- collection of doing so and I certainly cannot recall having any serious contact with him until the autumn of 1978. My contact then arose in the following way.
In the summer of 1978 I received a letter from Lady Ride dated 13th June in which she expressed great concern about her old friend Noel Croucher and sought my help. She described him as being a very wealthy but rather lonely and unhappy old man who was very worried about the disposal of a large sum of money which he still had available after having made what he considered were suitable settlements on members of his family. His primary desire was to help students from Hong Kong in research, and he seemed ready also to consider students in the United Kingdom (although she was not clear whether he meant to include Europeans as well as Chinese). He was not at all sure how to do this, and was unhappy about proposals which had been made to him by people in Hong Kong, by his financial advisers, and by Dr. Joseph Needham who was seeking money to further his monumental work on the history of Chinese science. In the course of discussions with him, May Ride had suggested that it might be a good idea to talk to me about his problems; this suggestion he adopted with enthusiasm and asked her to write to me accordingly. Following receipt of Lady Ride's letter I wrote to Mr. Croucher, indicating in general terms how one could arrange fairly easily to have students from Hong Kong come (for example) to Cambridge, and suggesting that his best procedure would be to establish a trust; I also indicated to him that I expected to be in Hong Kong in January 1979, and would be happy to talk to him then if he so wished.
After some delay I received a letter from Mr. Croucher dated 9th October 1978 in which, after thanking me for my suggestions, he said that he had indeed thought about setting up a trust or foundation a year or two before but decided then that such action might be premature. Now he had decided to consider the matter again and had talked in general terms about it to Rothschilds, Hong Kong, who handled some of his investments. This had led to direct contacts with Mr. Edmund de Rothschild who, apparently, had proceeded to draft a possible trust deed and to nominate advisers who might be associated with it. It was clear from the letter that Mr. Croucher was uneasy about Rothschild's activities and he stated that he wished me to be one of his trustees and that he would like to discuss the
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