Although Britain recognized the People's Republic of China in January 1950, it took another thirty-two years before full diplomatic relations could be established between the two states. Unlike the United States, Britain intended to maintain a presence during China's revolutionary turmoil of the early 1950s, thereby allowing trade to continue. However, the swift collapse of the wider British presence in China meant that only a small body of diplomats and consuls was left to fly the flag, at best negotiating complex new rules and petty restrictions, at worst living as virtual hostages. Relations sank to their lowest ebb at the height of the Cultural Revolution when, on the evening of 22 August 1967, Red Guards stormed the embassy in Beijing, burned the British Office, and subjected the staff and their families to verbal and physical harassment. Soon afterwards, Chinese diplomats at their embassy in London's Portland Place became involved in violent clashes with police stationed outside, one of them even wielding an axe. Such moments of unfulfilled promise form the basis for Chi-Kwan Mark's detailed account of Anglo-Chinese diplomatic relations during these turbulent years. Mark has drawn exhaustively on the government papers available in the National Archives, supplemented by those of leading British statesmen. The Chinese side of the equation is also explored, but, as Mark explains, the sudden closure of the declassified Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs papers for the period 1949–1965 have forced him to rely on published materials.

Mark proceeds chronologically, dealing surprisingly lightly with the Korean War to focus, instead, on the warming of Anglo-Chinese relations after the Geneva conference of 1954. If Korea (where British troops fought under a United Nations flag against Chinese “volunteers”) formed an immediate impediment to progress, it soon became apparent that Britain's ambivalence over the status of Taiwan and the People's Republic of China's seat at the United Nations would prove a more consistent thorn in the flesh. While Britain took a more nuanced position on these issues than the United States, it was still not enough to satisfy the Chinese. (Eventually, much to the bemusement of the Foreign Office, Britain was outflanked in the early 1970s by the boldness of Nixon and Kissinger.) Meanwhile, despite the constant petty skirmishes that bedeviled diplomatic relations, Anglo-Chinese trade recovered impressively in the late 1950s. By the early 1960s, it was possible to glimpse Anglo-Chinese relations’ being placed on a more even keel, especially as the new Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, had taken a keen interest in China in the 1950s. However, the twin traumas of the Vietnam War and the Cultural Revolution—combined with China's emergence as a nuclear power in 1964—snatched away this tantalizing prospect and meant that, instead, Wilson's first government (1964–1970) was forced to confront a series of crises. It fell to Wilson's great rival, the Conservative Edward Heath (prime minister 1970–1974), to take advantage of the changes sweeping across global politics and preside over an exchange of ambassadors. Ironically, it would be Heath, not Wilson, who was remembered by China as an “old friend,” in part the beneficiary of China's encouragement for his policy of leading Britain into the European Economic Community.

Mark's comprehensive analysis of the British diplomatic record is unlikely to be bettered. However, it cannot tell the full story, even of the British side, as long as so little attention is paid to the pro-Chinese voluntary groups that moved center stage while full diplomatic relations were in abeyance. The Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding receives only passing mention, and there is no reference at all to the far larger Britain-China Friendship Association, which dominated left-wing relations with China prior to the Sino-Soviet split, or to the Peace with China Committee during the Korean War. Moreover, the revival and growth of trade relations owed much to the unorthodox left-wing players who entered the arena after established business interests had largely retreated to Hong Kong. During the Cultural Revolution and the early 1970s, the only way to visit China was on a delegation organized by the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding. After 1972, the Foreign Office had to work hard to bring cultural relations safely back under its control. All of this indicates that a focus on conventional diplomatic interactions is not enough to explain the full scope of Anglo-Chinese relations during such an abnormal period. During these years, actors on the political fringe suddenly had a significant part to play, given that at times they might be the only interlocutors that the People's Republic of China was willing to accept.

Mark advances a compelling argument throughout the book: that the British government pursued a consistent policy of negotiation and did not allow China's sometimes wayward actions to knock it off course. Whichever party was in power, government's eyes were firmly fixed on the goal of fully normalized diplomatic relations, and Mark rightly dismisses the charge of British “appeasement” of China (at least in its pejorative sense). However, his underlying argument, that ritual and gesture dominated these years of “everyday Cold War,” is not entirely convincing. Ritual means that both sides understand what is meant by an action and calibrate their response accordingly, allowing relations to survive even the severest shocks. This hardly applies to the nadir of relations in August 1967, when it was not clear who was in charge in Beijing. Indeed, Mark concedes that the storming of the embassy was the “spontaneous action” (191) of overzealous Red Guards, eager to prove the extent of their Maoism. The argument that these actions were performative and theatrical fails to convey the terrifying extent to which relations had run out of control. However, the events of the late 1960s were undoubtedly exceptional, and both sides were keen to move on. When the Labour politician Denis Healey visited China in the early 1970s, he was amused to find that his guide was none other than the man who had threatened the police in Portland Place with an axe, now transformed into a charming host.