This book is a labour of love, in which Dr Mary Tiffen, a distinguished scholar of socio-economic development in Africa and the Middle East, tells the story of her family's engagement with China during the 19^th and early years of the 20^th centuries. Dr Tiffen recounts this story in considerable detail, highlighting the relationships that several of the women of her family enjoyed with the redoubtable Sir Robert Hart, Inspector-General of the China Maritime Customs Service. Hart was one of the most effective ‘China helpers’ in the late Qing period, and the service he led was one of the most powerful vectors of modernisation within China as she attempted to reform in the face of the often hostile Great Powers.

Dr Tiffen paints a portrait of Hart as a complex man driven by a powerful Protestant work ethic, who endured constant struggles between his sexual needs and his conscience. Hart noted in his diary on 1^st July 1876 that “sexuality is my great temptation”. The author depicts Hart's often lonely life, marked by frequent bouts of depression, and his attraction to intelligent young women. This latter led to the remarkably intimate correspondence Hart enjoyed with the daughters and wives of his staff and associates – relationships that Hart accepted were within ‘the bounds of friendship’. Hart's unsatisfactory relations with his wife and with his children, both legitimate and illegitimate, are explored by Dr Tiffen sympathetically. Hart's conflicting emotional issues led him use the “opium of work to combat his loneliness and sadness”.

Hart's work in China is described effectively, demonstrating his efforts in removing obstacles to commercial development – attempting to end the system of internal taxes on trade, creating a modern postal service, and promoting China's unity in the face of the encroaching Great Powers. And all this as the weakness of the Qing dynasty became ever more apparent.

The more important aspect of this book is to provide the reader with a description of the social history of middle-class British life in the Victorian and Edwardian age, both at home and abroad. This was a world in which family connections were paramount, women were clearly second-class citizens and illegitimacy was a disgrace. One is reminded of the perils of widowhood, and how near to the edge of ‘respectable’ society so many middle-class families existed.

For this reviewer the passages of most interest are those dealing with the Sino-French War of 1884 and the Boxer Uprising in 1900. British observers described the French victories as not battles but butchery – “very sickening to see and amongst all those looking on the only feeling was one of intense pity and disgust”. Hart said of the actions of the French navy that they were “a series of wilful, unnecessary, because unfair, and wicked murders”. Of the Westerners in China only the officers of the US Navy greeted the successes of the French with acclaim – perhaps they remembered Lafayette.

The eye-witness reports of the Boxer Uprising are of a kind typical of most contemporary accounts, both in their attitudes toward the Boxers and toward the various contingents sent to suppress the ‘rebellion’. Kathleen Carrall, Dr Tiffen's aunt, remarks in one of her letters (10^th July 1900) that the Japanese are “plucky – but perfect brutes: they and the Russians kill every Chinaman irrespective of age or sex they meet. . .loot, loot, loot is the order of the day at Tientsin”.

Altogether this is an intriguing collection of material (including some evocative photos) which illuminates the daily struggles of members of the Maritime Customs Service and of their families – the financial and social insecurities, the petty snobberies, competition for place and for advancement: all are clearly described in this work.