Adam Brookes Interviewed by Rana Mitter

Former BBC foreign correspondent Adam Brookes explains how a group of intrepid curators saved China’s finest art from the ravages of the Sino-Japanese War and World War II.

Brookes says the curators of the Forbidden City were faced with an almost impossible challenge of protecting the vast imperial art collections as war approached. The collection contains a million pieces of art including paintings on silk, rare Ming porcelain and the Stone Drums of Qin, which are adorned with 2,500-year-old inscriptions of crucial cultural significance. Brookes shows how the curators under the leadership of Ma Heng spent 16 years transporting artefacts thousands of miles across China during a period of violence, chaos and starvation.

A compelling story of art, war and adventure. Simon Sebag Montefiore

Brookes spent many years as a BBC foreign correspondent. He has been based in Indonesia, China and the United States and has also reported from Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea. Here he talks to University of Oxford professor of the history and politics of modern China and director of the university’s China Centre Professor Rana Mitter, author of China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism.