9th October - Hugo De Burgh - WHO ARE WE, and how will we survive in the Age of Asia? -

Hugo’s latest book is on a subject that matters to every thinking Briton: WHO ARE WE, and how will we survive in the Age of Asia? In it, he looks at the economic and cultural issues that face the 4 nations of the UK in the perspective of someone who has experienced China’s rise from the wasteland left by Chairman Mao to the fourth industrial revolution today. WHO ARE WE (Cambridge: CamRivers) was launched by Sir Vince Cable at the London School of

Hugo ‘Huge’ de Burgh is Director of China UK Creative Industries in the Institute of Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship, Goldsmiths College, University of London. From being a community development worker and then broadcast journalist in Scotland, he went on to teach journalism in Nottingham, in London and in China. He recently completed a fourth term at Tsinghua University, as Walt Disney Professor of Media and Communications in Schwarzman, the US college of International Relations.

In 2016, he founded Kensington Wade English-Chinese Bilingual School in London. Although, worldwide, there are many bilingual schools with Chinese, and 400 in the USA, Kensington Wade is still the only one in Europe. He hopes to see one at home in Scotland. Huge has authored or co-authored 15 books. His China’s Media in the Emerging World Order (Legend, 2020) describes and analyses a burgeoning global power of the 21st century. Earlier books have dealt with environment reporting, how China works and investigative journalists in a globalised, digitised, world.

His first novel "TO THE RIVER, why would you risk your life, and all that you love, for a stranger?"  was launched at the Mansion House by David Willetts, Chairman of the Pontignano Conference, in September 2024. It is a reflection on altruism, set in warn-torn Italy, 1943.