[...] I had always loved stories ever since I read Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Kidnapped’ at the age of six. I had my first flirtation with writing aged 18 when I wrote and directed a school play based on Euripides ‘Bacchae’ about the European incursion into Japan in the l9th Century. I never lost that desire to write, but for many years another love, travel, got in the way. I had my first taste while I was still at school, when, in one of the vacations, I drove with two friends through Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In the gap year before going on to University, I was employed as an instructor at the Hong Kong Outward Bound School. Then I worked my passage on a Norwegian merchant ship as a deckhand to Australia. I hitchhiked my way through the USA and South America. At Oxford I was taught by the poet and playwright, Francis Warner. One of the luminaries who came to talk to us at his seminars – as well as W H Auden, Stephen Spender, Iris Murdoch and others – was one of the greatest of our present day travel writers, Jan Morris. Listening to her, I thought I had discovered a vocation [...]

Adam Williams' Web site
Writer, speaker, businessman and novelist Adam Williams is the author of three acclaimed historical novels - The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure, The Emperor’s Bones and The Dragon’s Tail. Twenty years a businessman and banker in Beijing, he is the fourth generation of his family to be living and working in China.

Adam Williams' YouTube Channel
'China Revolutions and Family History', a talk by author Adam Williams at the Suzhou Bookworm on 14 November, 2007

Adam Williams on Squidoo
Excerpts from Adam's Web site and blog

Adam Williams' Blog
Personal blog and latest news of talks and speeches