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Executive, with what he sees as the inevitable concomitant to these developments of a ministerial system - are made fascinatingly clear.
Hong Kong was immensely lucky to have had Denis in senior positions throughout the formative years of modern Hong Kong. Without innovative, intelligent, and vigorous officers like him, what would the place have been like? At the same time, Denis, too, was lucky. For much of his early career, he had the sympathetic support of Ronald Holmes as his immediate superior: almost the only man with the imagination to countenance Denis's guerrilla attacks on the shibboleths of administration, and, more importantly, with the intelligence and drive to support them when he was satisfied they were needed. Had Denis had a succession of stolid and lazy lame-brains as his superiors, how long would it have taken for him to have been black-listed as just someone who "rocked the boat," who was "too clever for his own good”? I wonder if anyone with his flair and instinctive feel for the needs of ordinary people could survive in the Administrative Service of today?
Denis comes over in this book as a man of great intelligence and charm, wit, and decency. His 'horror and disgust' at the things disclosed by the Independent Commission Against Corruption come through, for instance, very clearly. Having worked for him for a couple of years, I know that the book shows the real Denis.
The book is very well printed by Hong Kong University Press. There are a few errors that should have been caught by the copy-editors (for instance, 'Rodean School' and 'the Ordinance Survey,' both on p. 151). Denis states that he is no historian, and there are a few places where there are minor errors of historical fact, although none that affect the overall value of the book. Among them are the names of the Seven Yeuk of Tai Po (p. 96), the date of the New Market at Tai Po (founded 1892, and not after the building of the Tai Po Road a decade later, as suggested on pp. 96 and 170-171), and the date of the Tolo Harbour arable reclamations (almost all in the nineteenth century, rather than the late eighteenth as suggested on p. 61).
All in all, this is a book of considerable charm; thoroughly to be recommended to anyone interested in today's Hong Kong.
PATRICK HASE