Noble House - Background

Background

Struan and Company is based on Jardine Matheson Holdings, which continues to exist as an Asian trading company. The chief character, Ian Dunross, is believed to be a composite character of two real life Jardine Matheson tai-pans, Sir Hugh Barton and Sir Michael Herries.

Rothwell-Gornt is based on Butterfield and Swire, now known as Swire Pacific. Quillan Gornt is based on two Swire tai-pans, John Kidston 'Jock' Swire and William Charles Goddard Knowles.

Unlike the other Asian Saga novels, Noble House is not closely based on a specific series of events, but is more a snapshot of the 1960s in Hong Kong, and serves as a capsule history of Jardines in the 1960s, against the backdrop of the impending Vietnam War and the recent Kim Philby defection. The story opens on Sunday, August 18, 1963, and runs through the days immediately preceding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In 1961 Jardine Matheson became a public company, with the initial offer oversubscribed over 56 times, which is attributed in the novel to tai-pan Ian Dunross. In 1963 the Hongkong Land subsidiary of Jardine (fictionalized as "Asian Properties") opened what was then the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which has today become one of the world's leading hotels. The Dairy Farm subsidiary of Jardine moved into the supermarket sector in 1964 with the acquisition of Wellcome (fictionalized as "H.K. General Stores"). A Jardine representative office was established in Australia in 1963 (fictionalized as the next assignment of Linbar Struan). The big set-pieces — the fire on the boat and the landslide — are also closely modeled on real happenings.

A major difference between the original novel and the later miniseries adaptation is that the television version changes the setting from 1963 to the late 1980s, and updates visible technology and the general atmosphere accordingly. The looming return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 is frequently mentioned, which was not a major concern in the 1960s.