About Anthony Grey

Anthony Grey's first international assignment for Reuters news agency was as East Europe correspondent based in East Berlin during the height of the Cold War. But working under constant surveillance by the Stazi – the East German secret police – was scant preparation for what was to follow, a posting to Peking (now Beijing) at the height of Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution.

On a sweltering night in the summer of 1967 in central Beijing, a mob of 200 Red Guards invaded Anthony Grey’s house chanting “Hang British Imperialist newsman Anthony Grey”. They dragged the Reuters journalist outside, hanged his cat in front of him, daubed him with black paint and flung him into a makeshift cell.

He was held in total isolation for more than two years. Anthony Grey managed to keep secret diaries in shorthand and hid them from his guards throughout his incarceration.

After his release, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to journalism and made UK Journalist of the year. His experience in China led to Anthony’s first book Hostage in Peking and set him on a new career path as an international best selling novelist.

Anthony also had a successful broadcasting career, making documentary films for BBC, ITV and Channel 4 and presented a current affairs programme on the BBC World Service.

Matthew Bannister on... Anthony Grey, the novelist and journalist who was held in solitary confinement for over two years by Red Guards during China’s Cultural Revolution.

Archive: BBC News, BBC Radio 4, 26/11/1968; Anthony Grey To Be Released: Mother Waits, BBC News, 03/10/1963; Anthony Grey Released: Mother Hears News, News, 04/10/1963; Radio Newsreel, BBC World Service, 12/10/1969; Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, 01/11/1969; Anthony Grey: One Man’s Freedom, One Pair of Eyes, BBC Two, 26/06/1971; Return to Peking, BBC Two, 12/12/1988.

Anthony Grey - Last Word BBC Radio 4, 31st October 2025

Desert Island Discs - Anthony Grey - BBC Radio 4, 1st November 1969

Roy Plomley's castaway is foreign correspondent Anthony Grey.

Favourite track: Concerto Grosso in C Major by George Frideric Handel
Book: Dictionary
Luxury: Book stall in Victoria station

About Saigon

Saigon is Anthony Grey's fourth novel. The 800 page epic deals with events in Vietnam between 1925 and 1975. It was published in 1982 and became an international bestseller.

Meridian, BBC World Service 22nd October 1982

Journalist Anthony Grey on his epic novel, Saigon.

Research

Anthony spent four years writing Saigon between 1978-1982. He lived in Paris for six months to research the first five sections of the novel set in French colonial Vietnam. He spent time at the archives of the old French Ministry of Colonies in the Rue Oudinot, and at the colonial newspaper archive in Versailles, as well as the Bibliotheque Nationale in central Paris. He then moved to Washington for eighteen months to research and write the last three sections dealing with America's involvement with Vietnam, writing daily in one of the offices then made available to scholars, researchers and writers at the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill. He also spent a lot of time at the National Archives in Washington.

Vietnam

Anthony Grey wasn't able to visit Vietnam during his research as he wasn't able to get a visa despite repeated applications. His first visit to the country was in the late 1980s when he went to make a one-hour television documentary for the BBC entitled Return to Saigon which allowed him to visit all the major scenes from his novel he had previously only envisaged in his imagination.

This is how Anthony described that trip:

‘In Vietnam we became the first foreign film crew to fly into the old colonial battlefield of Dien Bien Phu since the ill-fated French bastion fell there in l954. The fondness I had felt for Vietnam while researching and writing Saigon in France and the United States was enhanced enormously by at last seeing that very beautiful country and its people for myself at first hand.

The Communist authorities had turned down all my requests for visas whilst I had been preparing the novel so it was the greatest pleasure to be able to travel the length and breadth of Vietnam at long last during the research and filming trips. I learned from Vietnam’s Minister of Broadcasting that my novel had been translated into Vietnamese by the government for use in teaching officer cadets history at the People’s Defence University in Hanoi. I was truly touched since I had already learned with great surprise that the novel was being used as a teaching aid on history courses organised for cadet officers at the United States Navy Academy at Annapolis. I had consciously sought to give balance to the novel, to show that there are always heroes on both sides in every war - and the fact that both countries had officially found some educational value in the history-based fictional story was very gratifying.'

Motivation

Anthony's first three novels The German Stratagem, The Bulgarian Exclusive and The Chinese Assassin were spy thrillers, after that he turned his hand to historical fiction:

‘My primary motivation for writing Saigon and my other historical novels about long-term strife between East and West was the conviction that, in a chronically troubled world, it was vital to understand our past fully in order to make better decisions about the future. Also after my experiences as a foreign correspondent in Eastern Europe and China reporting factual history on a daily basis, I felt historical novels might reach and influence more people than straightforward history books.’

Synopsis

Joseph Sherman first visits Saigon - the capital of French colonial Cochin-China - as a young man on his father’s hunting trip in 1925. But the exotic land lures him back again and again as a traveler, soldier, and reporter. He returns because of his fascination for the enchanting city - and for Lan, a mandarin’s daughter.

Over five decades Joseph’s life becomes enmeshed with the political intrigues of two of Saigon’s most influential families, the French colonist Devrauxs, and the native Tran family. In this sweeping saga of tragedy and triumph, Joseph witnesses Vietnam’s turbulent, war-torn fate. He is there when millions of coolies rise against the French, and during their bloody last stand at Dien Bien Phu. And he sees US military “advisors” fire their first shots in America’s hopeless war against the Communist revolution.

A story of adventure, love, war, and political power, Saigon presents an enthralling and enlightening depiction of twentieth-century Vietnam.

‘The ringing irony of Saigon is that a major work of fiction was required to adequately explain the fundamental tragedy of the United States involvement in Vietnam… This is a novel of terrible importance.’  Kansas City Star

‘An absorbing saga, an epic novel… Anthony Grey is not just a man of steely courage as his survival of two years as a hostage in Peking demonstrated; he is one of that rare species – a born storyteller.’  Daily Mail