Richard Lloyd Parry: podcast review

Richard Lloyd Parry is Asia Editor for The Times, multi-garlanded journalist, and author of 3 outstanding non-fiction books based on his Asian reporting, which have won him the Orwell Prize in 2012, and the Folio Prize in 2018. Here’s Richard’s review of Series 3 of our podcast series The Truth Lies in Bedtime Stories, Life on the Edge: Taiwan, China, America, and the Moment I Realised Mrs. Wang Was Mostly Guessing What Her Husband Said

“Robert Stern’s vivid telling of the story of the evacuation of Da Chen Island brings to life a forgotten episode in a largely unknown history, a story that the world at large will increasingly have to reckon with.

His droll, lightly fictionalised narration begins with a Chinese immigrant couple in Alabama and flashes back to one of the most dramatic episodes of the Cold War, when 30,000 soldiers and civilians fled from a Taiwanese-occupied island before the advancing Red Army.

In an age of Chinese menaces and assertiveness, when the prospect of a full-scale invasion of Taiwan seems ever more real, Stern’s story is entertaining, educational and compelling.”