WELSH, Frank (Reeson) 1931-

PERSONAL: Born August 16, 1931, in Washington, England; son of Francis Cox Welsh (a banker) and Doris M. Ibbett (maiden name, Reeson); married Agnes Cowley (a county councilor), April 15, 1954; children: Jane Welsh Young, Sophie Welsh Rehmet, Ben, John. Education: Magdalene College, Cambridge, M.A., 1956. Politics: Labour. Religion: Church of England. Hobbies and other interests: Sailing.

ADDRESSES: Home—37 George St., Cambridge, England; and Le Vieux Logis de Lizant, 86400 Civray, France. Agent—Andrew Best, Curtis Brown, 162-168 Regent St., London W1R 5TA, England.

CAREER: Writer, 1982—. Affiliated with John Lewis Partnership, England, 1954-58, and CAS Group, England, 1958-64; William Brandt's Sons & Co. Ltd., England, managing director, 1965-72; Grindlays Bank, England, director, 1971-85. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Alcoa distinguished visiting scholar and visiting lecturer, beginning 1979. Chair, Hadfields Ltd., 1967-79, Jensen Motors Ltd., 1968-72, and Cox & Kings, 1972-76; director, Henry Ansbacher & Co., 1976-82, and Trireme Trust, beginning 1983; member, British Waterways Board, 1975-81, Royal Commission on the National Health Service, 1976-79, and Health Education Council, 1978-80.

MEMBER: International Banker Association (member of general advisory council, 1976-80), N. British Industrial Association, London Industrial Association (chair, beginning 1984), Savile Club, United Oxford and Cambridge University Club.

WRITINGS:

The Profit of the State: Nationalised Industries and Public Enterprises, Temple Smith (London, England), 1982.

The Afflicted State: A Survey of Public Enterprise, Century (London, England), 1983.

First Blood: Tales of Horror from the Border Country, Constable (London, England), 1985.

(With George Ridley) Bend'Or, Duke of Westminster: A Personal Memoir, Clark (London, England), 1985.

Uneasy City: An Insider's View of the City of London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1986.

Building the Trireme, Constable (London, England), 1988.

Companion Guide to the Lake District, Collins (London, England), 1989.

Hong Kong: A History, Collins (London, England), 1992, published as A Borrowed Place: The History of Hong Kong, Kodansha International (New York, NY), 1993, reprinted as Hong Kong, Harper-Collins (London, England), 1997.

Dangerous Deceits, HarperCollins (London, England), 1999.

South Africa: A Narrative History, Kodansha International (New York, NY), 1999.

The Four Nations: A History of the United Kingdom, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2003.

A New History of Australia, Allen Lane (London, England), 2004.

Contributor to Country Life.

SIDELIGHTS: A self-confessed "historian by inclination and somewhat by training," British author Frank Welsh has found a niche, as he once explained, "between business history, social history, and political history, and I have a pronounced interest in nautical matters. My bias is that of a classically educated, unregenerate and unreconstructed, imperialist and traditionalist Englishman." As such, Welsh has written social histories and guides to England, including Uneasy City: An Insider's View of the City of London, The Companion Guide to the Lake District, and The Four Nations: A History of the United Kingdom. In addition, Welsh has penned histories of former colonies or dependencies of the British Empire, including A Borrowed Place: The History of Hong Kong and South Africa: A Narrative History.

In A Borrowed Place, Welsh traces the history of Hong Kong from its beginnings as an essentially barren island that was unwillingly ceded to the British by China in 1842. Hong Kong's growth happened initially because of the opium traders, who were looking for new materials to import. With the sale of the Kowloon Peninsula to England in 1859 and the leasing of the so-called New Territories, the British became overlords of the city and territory. Following Japanese occupation in World War II, Hong Kong emerged as one of the lions of the Asian economic region, with banking and investment concerns headquartering there; the city provided a window to mainland China when that country began to trade with the West. Welsh takes these aspects of Hong Kong into account in his "deeply researched" work, according to a contributor for Publishers Weekly. However, the same reviewer found A Borrowed Place to be a "sterile history." Andrew J. Nathan, reviewing the same work in the New Republic, commented that "Welsh has written a history not so much of Hong Kong as of British rule there, a study in colonial rather than Chinese history." Nathan further noted that Welsh "has used only a few Chinese sources, spelling Chinese personal and place names wrong almost as often as he spells them right." A writer for the Economist, however, had a better opinion of the book and its author: "Mr. Welsh tells the story well of the runt that became a champion."

Welsh delves into colonial history again with his South Africa: A Narrative History. Here he covers two hundred years of South African history "with bold strokes that some may find candid but others coarse," according to Thomas Davis in Library Journal. Booklist's David Cline felt that Welsh "has created a precise account" of the country, from its earliest days of the bushmen, through the time of the early Dutch settlers and their decision to utilize slaves, to the establishment of the diamond mines, the takeover by the English in 1795, the 1910 establishment of the Union of South Africa, the days of apartheid, and on to South Africa's ultimate independence and the election of Nelson Mandela as its first black president. Cline also felt that Welsh's text was "comprehensive enough" for classroom use. A contributor for the Journal of Negro History found the work "particularly helpful" in contextualizing the country's modern condition into its historical tradition. A critic for Publishers Weekly had further praise for Welsh's history, calling it a "vivid narrative" and also noting that Welsh was both "outspoken and opinionated." And Stephen Taylor, reviewing the same work in the New York Times Book Review, found Welsh's narrative to be "refreshingly free of . . . polemics." According to Taylor, Welsh "stands squarely in the tradition of the liberal school: his assessments are judicious, his opinions fair."

With The Four Nations, Welsh turns his historian's eye to his own country, writing of the "creation, then the ongoing breakup, of the United Kingdom into its four component nations," as Robert Moore described the work in Library Journal. Starting his study with the Roman conquest of the island, Welsh traces the establishment of the modern boundaries of Wales, Scotland, England, and Ireland, paying special attention to the histories of the latter two countries. Emphasis is given to the Irish question, from the unsuccessful Rising of 1798, to the days of the Great Famine in mid-eighteenth century, the partition of the country in the early part of the twentieth century, and the ensuing religious conflict in Northern Ireland. Welsh also looks at the nationalistic movements in Wales and Scotland that have led to these regions' growing autonomy. According to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, Welsh "has chosen breadth of coverage over depth" in this survey of 2,000 years of history. For Ronald Hutton, reviewing The Four Nations in the Times Literary Supplement, Welsh's work "is essentially a history of the English impact on the British Isles." Hutton further commented that this historical analysis is "a big, exciting, opinionated book that veers between the shrewd and the half-baked."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 1998, David Cline, review of South Africa: A Narrative History, p. 564.

Economist (U.S.), September 4, 1993, review of A Borrowed Place: The History of Hong Kong, pp. 85-86.

Journal of Negro History, summer, 2000, review of South Africa, p. 141.

Library Journal, September 15, 1998, Thomas Davis, review of South Africa, p. 96; March 15, 2003, Robert Moore, review of The Four Nations: A History of the United Kingdom, p. 100.

New Republic, August 22, 1994, Andrew J. Nathan, review of A Borrowed Place, pp. 46-49.

New York Times Book Review, March 7, 1999, Stephan Taylor, review of South Africa, p. 30.

Publishers Weekly, August 16, 1993, review of A Borrowed Place, p. 95; December 7, 1998, review of South Africa, p. 43; March 3, 2003, review of The Four Nations, p. 64.

Times Literary Supplement, December 7, 2002, Ronald Hutton, review of The Four Nations.*