Sex
Male
Status
Deceased
Australian author, journalist, and long-term resident of Hong Kong.
Major biographical works:
Hughes, Richard, Foreign Devil: Thirty Years of Reporting in the Far East, Andre Deutsch Limited, London 1972.
Macswan, Norman, The Man Who Read the East Wind: A Biography of Richard Hughes Extraordinary Correspondent, Kangaroo Press, Sydney 1982.
Photos that show this Person
1959
1968
Comments
An FCC stalwart
He is commemorated in the Hughes Room, the larger of the function rooms at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong (where he was President and a long-term stalwart).
I occasionally lunched with…
I occasionally lunched with him in mid 1968 in the Cosmos? restaurant
Borrowed
Some mention should be made of 'Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time', Hughes' excellent short account of living in HK from the 60s through the 70s. Wonderful title. It's been some time since I read it but it helps explain why so many visitors like Ian Fleming thought it useful to consult Hughes when writing about this city back then.
Dick Hughes and “Alcoholics Synonymous”
Throughout the 1960’s my father, Hong Kong merchant Paul D. Alderton, belonged to a sociable club that satirically called itself “Alcoholics Synonymous”. The club had its own tie, featuring a multitude of foaming beer mugs underlined by the roman numerals XV1, which were dotted over a purple ground. I recall how, during the mid-1960’s, “A.S.” was seemingly centred around the genial figure of Dick Hughes, the doyen of the Hong Kong foreign press corps at the time. This group of “dedicated talkers, drinkers and gourmets”, limited to sixteen members but welcoming invited guests, met every Saturday morning for the purpose of “alleviating the cares of the past week”. The members, mainly journalists, businessmen, and diplomats, took turns at being chairman, so that each member’s turn came up in rotation once every sixteen weeks. One eminent guest, the Australian author and journalist, Frank Clune, noted that “the catch is that the chairman has to shout drinks for the mob.” Each meeting was scheduled to start at 11 a.m. and improbably end when the chairman for the week called for the last drink at 11.45. In practice though, the socializing for some members often continued on in an informal manner into lunch and, sometimes, well beyond.