A collection of illustrated stories, featuring diverse, inspiring and empowering characters, celebrating kindness, courage and the importance of being true to yourself. Forgotten Fairy Tales of Kindness and Courage breathes new life into a collection of once much-loved, now forgotten tales, beautifully retold by Mary Sebag-Montefiore. A disabled prince fights for his kingdom, and learns the importance of understanding others. A princess finds the courage to rescue her friend from goblins. A girl steps into the world of a book, only to find what it means to be herself. Full of magic and enchantment, these stories celebrate kindness, courage and the importance of being true to yourself. With a foreword by Dr Zoe Williams, NHS GP, TV presenter and health educator.

This book, first published in 1956, contains the stuff of other people’s memories. Thus you will read of magicians and immortals; of dragons and pills of eternal life; of generals and eunuchs; of emperors and poets; of palaces and concubines. The author has made nothing up; if there are liars along the route, they were there before he came along. The study of stories and ballads from deep in a country’s past can tell a reader much about the present-day culture of a society; this is surely true with these tales from China’s history.

"We must religiously observe our engagements with China, but I fear that Hong Kong is a sorry possession and Chusan is a magnificent island admirably placed for our purposes." So wrote the home secretary Sir James Graham to the prime minister Sir Robert Peel, as British diplomats prepared to return the island of Chusan to Chinese rule during the winter of 1845. For years, this now little-known island off the coast of Zhejiang province had been home to thousands of men, women and children of all classes and backgrounds, of all races and religions, from across the British Empire and beyond. Before the Union Jack ever flew over Hong Kong, it had been raised on Chusan. From a wealth of primary archives, Liam D'Arcy-Brown pieces together the forgotten story of how the British wrested Chusan from the Qing dynasty, only to hand it back for the sake of Queen Victoria's honour and Britain's national prestige. At a time when the Chinese Communist Party is inspiring a new brand of patriotism by revisiting the shame inflicted during the Opium Wars, here is a book that puts Britain's incursions into nineteenth-century China in a fascinating and revealing new light.

Vol. 34 includes "Special tariff conference issue" Nov. 6, 1925.