All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French

Putnam Weale’s The Silver Sutra…

Posted: September 14th, 2019 | No Comments »

Bertram Simpson, aka Putnam Weale, is one of the most interesting foreigners in early twentieth century China. He is best remembered now for his book Indiscreet Letters From Peking By the time of the First World War he was serving as the Daily Telegraph correspondent in Peking from and had devoted himself to writing – a jobbing hack, begging up newspaper work, earning a few coppers stringing for the new-fangled wire services, penning pretty bad sensationalist novels – for instance, The Silver Sutra (1934) featuring dashing adventurers and beautiful women in Mongolia hunting priceless silver and fighting Russian bandits…The book was published posthumously as Simpson was hacked and shot to death in a Tientsin street in 1930…(but that’s another story!)



Leave a Reply