In her debut book, At Least We Lived, Emma Oxford recalls the remarkable romance of her parents. Sparks fly when Audrey Watson, a member of Churchill’s spy agency, is sent to Chungking in 1943 to attend a tea party given by Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. She meets Max Oxford, an intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force that had escaped the recently fallen Hong Kong, and the two quickly marry. Oxford supplements her parent’s collection of letters, journals and memories with her own extensive research.
// Mar 15, 1pm, RMB75. Glamour Bar.
It must have taken some time to collate all your research for At Least We Lived. How did you set about it?
My parents’ letters and journals were my starting point and are at the heart of the book. But I had to do a lot of work to understand their lives and times more completely: I tracked down people who had known them, I traveled to the places that were important to them, I read histories, archival papers and memoirs wherever I could find them.
How important was it for you to accurately portray such a personal story?
It was very important. If I hadn’t been writing about my parents, I’d probably have taken more liberties with the facts!
Can you talk about your visits to China for your preparations for the book?
I went twice to Chongqing, the city where my parents met and married while it was China’s wartime capital, and made other fascinating trips including a 700 hundred mile drive from Chongqing to Kunming, following old roads that Max and Audrey drove in an alcohol-fuelled truck on their way out of China while the war was still raging.
I lived in Hong Kong for two years while I was researching the book, and only then understood the horror of the 1941 battle for Hong Kong and the miracle of my father’s escape into China after the colony surrendered to Japan.
After deciding to write the book, did you make any surprising discoveries about your parents' lives?
While my parents were still alive, they would occasionally talk about the past: Max made light of brushes with death in Africa and Asia, Audrey spoke of a childhood in Chile, of secret wartime work in London, and of how she took a job in China. But I knew none of the details until I began work on this book.
I was intrigued – but not entirely surprised – to learn about the love affairs each had had before they met, though tantalizing details remain a mystery.
What can we expect from your LitFest event?
To learn why I called the book At Least We Lived, and to get a glimpse into a lost world of sea voyages and flying boats, of ‘dressing for dinner’ even when home alone, and of surviving a wrenching world war.
At Least We Lived is your first book, has the process inspired you to write a second?
There are themes, such as the role of women in the 1940s and 50s, which I’d like to explore further. I might also delve further back into the past and write about my mother’s ancestry in South America.
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