The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power (London: Yale University Press, 2024), which I wrote in 2023 after a year-long sabbatical, is the first comprehensive history of the bilateral relationship to have appeared since 1911. That sets out what might be called the British China story, from the 1600s to the present. There are a number of excellent studies about specific aspects of the colonial experience of Britain in China, and with China, in the work of Robert Bickers: Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai (2003), The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832–1914 (2011) and Getting Stuck in for Shanghai: Putting the Kibosh on the Kaiser from the Bund (2014), all published by Allen Lane.

Donna Brunero, Britain's Imperial Cornerstone in China: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1854–1949 (London: Routledge, 2006) deals with one of the main planks of the British engagement in pre-People's Republic China – the customs service and the archives in English that this left behind. Doyenne of sinology between Britain and China for the last 60 years or more is the great Wang Gungwu, whose Anglo-Chinese Encounters since 1800: War, Trade, Science, and Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) is one of the most authoritative accounts. For the Opium Wars and Britain's role, Julie Lovell, The Opium Wars (London: Picador, 2011) is beautifully written.