The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City

by Paul French

New York Times bestselling author Paul French tells the extraordinary story of the last Emperor of China and the final two years during which he and his court occupied Peking’s secretive Forbidden City.

A king without a crown, a ruler without a people, a monarch without a realm.

In the early 1920s, the former-Emperor of China, Puyi and his Empress, Wanrong, were sequestered inside Peking’s ancient Forbidden City. Surrounded by scheming courtiers, fawning servants, and corrupt eunuchs, Puyi did not know from one day to the next whether he would experience restoration, expulsion, or assassination.

The Last Emperor of China delves into the final years of the Manchu Dynasty, beginning with China’s last royal wedding. Contrary to established belief, this was not a loveless marriage between an impotent Emperor and a neglected Empress. Paul French calls upon previously unpublished letters from the Emperor’s tutor and the diary of Wanrong’s English teacher, her closest companion. These sources shed an entirely new light on the final days of China’s last dynasty before the imperial court’s brutal expulsion, revealing a loving relationship and an Emperor attempting to assert control of the Forbidden City.

More than just the tale of the royal couple, The Last Emperor of China is also the story of the ancient citadel itself—the Forbidden City. It was a haven prohibited to all except the imperial family and their court. It survived looting, conflagration, and bombardment. A redoubt of the old dynasty, the Forbidden City was perhaps the greatest symbol of constancy and power in China—as it remains today.

Genres: History, China, Nonfiction, Biography, Politics

320 pages, Hardcover

First published August 27, 2026

About the author

PAUL FRENCH was born in London and lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. His book Midnight in Pekingwas a New York Times bestseller and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. He received the Mystery Writers’ of America Edgar award for Best Fact Crime and a Crime Writers’ Association (UK) Dagger award for non-fiction. His book City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir received much praise with The Economist writing, ‘…in Mr French the city has its champion storyteller.’ Both Midnight in Peking and City of Devils are currently in development for film.

Reviews

[Paul Cornelius]

Paul French has become the source for sources when it comes to expatriates/foreigners in China between the two World Wars, especially English language sources. His approach seems to be to slice off a particular person or persons and describe how they were changed from their exposure to China, while also explaining how representations of China might have changed because of them. It worked perfectly with French's book on Wallis Simpson. And it has worked well with other lesser known individuals.

This book isn't quite about that. Although it tries to be. Ostensibly, it's about Puyi, China's last emperor, the boy emperor who came to the throne at age three and was finally expelled from the Forbidden City in Peking in 1924. It also seems to be about his empress, Wanrong. But not really. No, it's actually the story of Puyi's tutor, Reginald Johnston, and Wanrong's English teacher, Isabel Ingram. That is more in line with French's usual approach. So is his gathering together of heretofore unpublished material, especially from Ingram. The problem is that there isn't enough of this new material to make a book contained to Johnston and Ingram. Thus, it cuts back and forth between them and especially Puyi.

Puyi of course is the headline grabber. His recognition comes primarily from the 1987 Bertolucci movie of almost the same title, The Last Emperor. And this fact leads French to overly rely and comment on the film. Throughout the text, all sort of extraneous comparisons to the movie appear. Peter O'Toole read Confucius we learn. Why? Why distract from the story to constantly use a forty year old movie for your baseline of comparison.

The way the film and other trivia pops up also leads to another fault with the book. For French uses footnotes and endnotes. They frequently even overlap each other. The footnotes, moreover, simply seem to grow out of every page. And it's not one or two of them but often three. So you have the pages cluttered up with endnotes and asterisks, daggers, and double daggers. This ruins the flow of the story, which already suffers from some choppiness, especially Chapter Three, which is one long repetitive rehash of the people filling out the main personages of expatriate Peking.

I realize French is trying to write a popular history accessible to general audiences while maintaining academic rigor. But the forest of cites and footnotes robs the work of clarity. French should use another citation style. Think about MLA. MLA just allows for simple cites. If you have extra material you want to discuss, then put in the main text. If it doesn't fit there, it doesn't belong in the damn book! I think 80 percent or more of French's asterisks and daggers could easily fill out the main body of the book. The other 20 percent, such as the constant comparisons to the Bertolucci film, can simply be done away with.

One other thing. At one point early on, French mentions Mervyn Peake and his Gormenghast books, saying they were inspired by Peake's exposure to China early in his life. I thought this preposterous. At first. Then, French sort of convinced me of its accuracy and made me want to know more. Then he does what he often does in this book. He drops the matter never to return to it again. As I say, choppy, often repetitive, and at times an undisciplined narrative. Maybe French plans for his next book to be about Peake???? That would be interesting.

[BonniePB]

The Last Emperor is densely packed with meticulous research framed around the turbulent political and social miasma surrounding Emperor Puyi’s ascension to the throne as well as his marriages and relationships to Empress Wanrong and second consort Wenxiu.

As I said, this is a meticulously researched book, but I found the presentation of that research to be tangential and disorganized at times. Personally, I think I would have benefited from having a basic knowledge of this time period before going into this book. While I have visited the Forbidden City in Beijing and recognized some things (hutongs! Drum Tower! I know you!), I know next to nothing about Chinese history and its historical culture.

Although this book wasn’t the entry point to an aspect of the country’s history I hoped it would be, I think readers who are already somewhat familiar with the topics, people, and events in this part of China’s past will really enjoy what The Last Emperor has to offer.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press for the eARC via NetGalley.

[William de_Rham]

In 1908, two-year-old Aisin Ghiorroh Pu Yi entered Peking’s Forbidden City and ascended the throne of the Chinese Emperor.

He would live in the Forbidden City for the next 16 years, experiencing:

— his own abdication (signed for him by his father as regent) three years later in 1911, when he was only five;

— China’s new republican government that rarely allowed him to leave his “gilded cage” managed by corrupt officials and eunuchs;

— his education at the hands of various tutors, including Scotsman Reginald Johnston who would become a trusted aide and advisor;

— his marriage to his Empress, Wanrong, and their relationship with consort, Wenxiu;

— his attempts to eliminate waste, fraud, and theft in the administration of the Forbidden City, including his dismissal and expulsion of thousands of eunuchs;

— his own expulsion from the Forbidden City in 1924 (after which, eventually, he would be installed as the “puppet” Emperor of Manchukuo by the Empire of Japan.

In describing Puyi’s 16-year “reign” (as powerless as it was), author Paul French delves deeply into the history of China, including its various dynasties and the forces at play in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He examines in detail various aspects of the Forbidden City, including its geography/topography, its many buildings and the antiquities contained therein, its centuries-old customs and practices, and its administration. And he devotes much attention to the relationships between Puyi, wife Wanrong, consort Wenxiu, tutor Reginald Johnston, and Wanrong’s American tutor Isabel Ingram. In particular, he relies on previously unpublished letters to refute the commonly held view that Puyi was a cold and distant husband, and to portray Puyi and Wanrong as two people who not only enjoyed each other’s company but relied on each other.

What emerges is the picture of a man beset and trapped by forces completely beyond his control that would severely limit his freedom and almost completely deny him the ability to choose for himself what sort of life he wanted.

While the “Last Emperor of China” is not a comprehensive biography, I found it to be a highly interesting work that instilled in me a desire to learn more about this man who would go on to become the Emperor of Japanese-held Manchukuo, then a war criminal imprisoned in China and the Soviet Union, then a rehabilitated citizen of communist China, and then a man protected by Chinese premier Zho Enlai (a/k/a Chou En-lai) during Mao Zedong’s (a/k/a Mao Tse-tung) violent “Cultural Revolution” during the 1960s.

"The Last Emperor of China" is scheduled to be published on November 17, 2026.

My thanks to NetGalley, author Paul French, and publisher St. Martin’s Press for providing me with a complimentary electronic ARC. All of the foregoing is my honest, independent opinion.

[CYIReadBooks (Claire)]

Paul French’s book zooms in on a sliver of Puyi’s life: the last two years he and Empress Wanrong spent inside the Forbidden City, from their 1922 wedding to their expulsion in 1924. Drawing on diaries, letters, and other newly used sources—especially Wanrong’s American tutor Isabel Ingram and Puyi’s Scottish tutor Reginald Johnston, author French reconstructs court routine, palace politics, eunuchs, tennis, photography, and the strange half-life of an emperor without an empire.

I usually love nonfiction. This one missed the mark.After Bertolucci’s film, I wanted atmosphere and narrative drive. What I got felt like a school textbook I would mine for a research paper: thorough, sourced, and packed with detail I did not need at that volume. Meal lists, household arrangements, who walked where, who wrote what to whom—the minutiae piled up until reading became a slog. The story is inherently cinematic. The telling is not.If you want a reference work on those two years, this will serve. If you want to feel the twilight of the Forbidden City the way the movie made you feel it, look elsewhere. Two stars.

I received a DRC from St. Martin's Press through NetGalley. This review is my own and reflects my honest thoughts and opinions.

[The Bookish Elf]

Since 1934 the standard account of the last two years anyone spent living as royalty inside the Forbidden City has come from a Scotsman who was quietly in love with a woman he almost never mentions. Reginald Johnston's Twilight in the Forbidden City runs to five hundred pages and gives the empress's own tutor exactly one sentence. The Last Emperor of China by Paul French is built out of what that tutor wrote instead, and it revises the received story further than any footnote correction has a right to.

Where The Last Emperor of China Sits

French has spent two decades as the chronicler of foreign Peking and Shanghai: Midnight in Peking on the killing of Pamela Werner, City of Devils on wartime Shanghai's nightclub operators, a biography of the adman Carl Crow. The method holds steady. Take a narrow window, work the newspapers and the private papers until the period stops being scenery, and put the reader in the room.

The window here is twenty-three months. It opens with a wedding procession setting out at four in the morning on 1 December 1922 and shuts with warlord troops giving Puyi three hours to pack on 5 November 1924. Everything a general reader associates with the last emperor, Manchukuo and the Tokyo tribunal and the re-education centre, is compressed into one late chapter.

That narrowness is the argument. Three sources supply the popular version, and The Last Emperor of China by Paul French treats all three as interested parties: Johnston's memoir, which French calls somewhat vainglorious; Puyi's ghostwritten From Emperor to Citizen, produced under communist supervision and revised again as recently as last year to fit the current line in Beijing; and Bertolucci's film, which cast Peter O'Toole and settled the Scotsman's face in everyone's head for good.

What the Ingram Papers Change

Isabel Ingram was born in Peking in 1902 to American missionaries, graduated from Wellesley in 1922, spent that summer riding four days into the mountains after a supposedly lost tribe, then took over from her older sister as English tutor to the Empress Wanrong. She kept a diary. She wrote constantly to her sister Miriam. Both survive with her family, along with Johnston's letters to her, which is more than can be said for Johnston's own forty-year archive.

What Ingram wrote down contradicts nearly everything the received account insists upon, and The Last Emperor of China by Paul French rests its whole case on it. The marriage is supposed to have been cold, sexless and humourless, the emperor feeble and unmanned. Edward Behr called Puyi bisexual, Bertolucci called him homosexual, Ian Buruma calls him most probably gay, and French notes that not one of them produces a scrap of evidence for it.

The counter-evidence is domestic and it accumulates. Bicycles ridden indoors, which meant prising out wooden thresholds that had spent five hundred years keeping spirits out of imperial buildings. A tennis court laid on the levelled ashes of a burned palace, Johnston umpiring because nobody else could plausibly call a ball out on the Emperor of China. Harold Lloyd shorts watched on a loop by a short-sighted young man who had just been given his first pair of glasses. Kite string let out over the eaves. Chewing gum, smuggled in by somebody who denied it.

What works
The bureaucracy. The chapter on the Imperial Household Department is the sharpest institutional history in The Last Emperor of China by Paul French. Every candle, block of ice and grade of toilet paper had its own bureau, and the Imperial Buttery invoiced for 240 chickens and ducks a month on behalf of two people. Johnston called the department vampires draining the life-blood of the dynasty. French supplies the arithmetic behind the insult.
The fire. The blaze of 27 June 1923 is handled as a crime scene: an audit due that morning, a storehouse of uncatalogued treasure at the epicentre, fire crews held at the gate on a technicality, fewer than 400 of 6,643 catalogued items recovered. No verdict is forced. The timing is left sitting there.
Wenxiu. The consort is normally a footnote sulking in a distant courtyard. Here she has a tutor of her own and a habit of giving away the jasmine she is wearing.
The footnotes. A parallel book. Japanese knotweed reaches Sandringham, a bamboo fire pump is weaponised with quicklime, and a Ming aristocrat with a magnificent title is found living in a hovel.
The candour about sources. French flags the famous mislabelled-portrait anecdote as probably invented, sets Puyi's version of the 1923 escape plot against Johnston's flat denial without choosing, and says plainly when he is surmising rather than showing.
Where The Last Emperor of China Gives Ground

Four things stop The Last Emperor of China by Paul French from being as tight as its own premise.

Chapter three is an anthology. Twenty pages of foreign visitors describing yellow roofs and vermillion walls, Pierre Loti through to Peter Quennell. French concedes mid-chapter that such accounts become repetitive, then runs four more.
The eunuch chapter travels a long way from 1923. A good essay on castration, imperial employment and the trade in palace treasure, spent mostly in the Ming while the two-year clock stops dead.
The diary material is slighter than the framing promises. Bolts of satin admired and immediately gifted, pastries from a Tianjin bakery, a braid rebraided because the first attempt was too tight. Charming, and cumulative, and the case is made long before the last of it arrives.
The last chapter sprints. Twenty-two years are covered at a pace that would seem indecent if the preceding 250 pages had not been so patient.
Do You Need to Know the History First?

No, and that is one of the real strengths of The Last Emperor of China by Paul French. The Qing collapse, the Articles of Favourable Treatment, the warlord factions and the New Culture Movement are explained where they are needed, without the tone dropping into a textbook. A cast of characters, a list of Qing emperors, two maps and a note on romanisation sit front and back. Readers arriving from the Bertolucci film will find it corrected on several points and quietly endorsed on one: its portrait of three young people who mostly got along.

Content notes for The Last Emperor of China

The Last Emperor of China by Paul French is a work of history and does not soften what it records. The castration procedure is described clinically and at length, including a father operating on his own eight-year-old son. Two suicides, one by opium and one by drowning. Physical punishment of servants, including a bureau that existed to administer beatings. Addiction and a forced withdrawal described in detail. The killing of a newborn. A fatal shooting during a burglary. Colonial and racist attitudes are quoted from the period sources rather than endorsed.

The Last Word

Two years that every previous account agreed were miserable turn out to have been rather happy, and the pleasure of The Last Emperor of China by Paul French is watching a settled story come apart under ordinary domestic evidence: hats, cake, a borrowed camera, a swing in the Imperial Garden. It drifts whenever it leaves that evidence, and it drifts more often than a twenty-three-month subject should allow. What holds is the shape. Two tutors, four young people, one enormous cold building, and a clock nobody in the room could hear. The epilogue puts the emperor back at his own front gate in 1960, in a gardener's uniform, queuing with everybody else to buy a ticket into the house he grew up in. He pays. He goes in. He looks for the ants.

[East West Notes]

For those with a strong interest in China, the early 1920s inside the Forbidden City have long seemed both familiar and alien, interpreted and reinterpreted in memoirs, novels, propaganda and film. Yet the years between Puyi’s marriage and the court’s expulsion have rarely received sustained attention, and few accessible works draw on recently available sources. Paul French’s latest book, The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City examines this claustrophobic and chaotic period, beginning with observations that show the artificiality of the palace world, where the emperor and his surroundings were described as “a biological device for ruling the world” or “the hive of some rare species of insect.” The book foregrounds the foreign tutors Reginald Johnston, a University of Edinburgh and Oxford graduate and colonial official, and Isabel Ingram, a Wellesley alumna who returned to China to tutor Wanrong, whose proximity to the young couple offers an outsider’s perspective on the final years of the royal family.

Drawing on writings from Johnston and Ingram, French reconstructs a marriage that is completely different from the familiar presentation of scheming, avarice and neglect. Puyi emerges as both pitiable and alarming. In one chapter, he barely had the decision making ability to even insist on getting glasses for his vision problems, wholly dependent on external guidance because his royal minders feared any change or modernity. The Emperor, the Empress and Consort were hemmed in not only by the new Republican government but also by the Imperial Household Department, whose bizarre function rendered the palace both sanctuary and prison. Most of the palace staff seemed to be only interested in their own preservation and self-enrichment. It is overwhelming to read how obsessively they managed the royal family, even as the palace itself suffered neglect. The couple had every luxury, yet basic needs were overlooked, including their physical and mental health and the upkeep of the palace’s interiors. It was crazy to read about how Chinese treasures, artworks from European masters and countless other valuables from around the world were just piled around with no categorisation or organisation. No wonder they were so easy to walk off with and sell whenever anyone saw the chance.

French is, as always, brilliant at describing the routines of daily life and how things would have appeared at the time. I had to double check the ages, but I believe Empress Wanrong was just sixteen, educated and far more worldly than her husband (which to be fair, wouldn’t have been hard), while Consort Wenxiu, thirteen (!!!), was quietly brought to the palace the day before the wedding. Their tennis matches, music lessons, experiments with British etiquette and amateur photography complicate the popular image of the relationship between these three. Yet French’s reluctance to speculate about the inner lives of the women leaves a bit of a gap. References to other young women of similar backgrounds might have offered a comparative frame for understanding how Wanrong and Wenxiu interpreted their roles. The empress’s relationship with Wenxiu, often portrayed as fraught, appears here more companionable, even kind, a reminder of how mythmaking and propaganda have distorted the final years. It would’ve been nice to read the words of other girls of similar age, and how they felt about being married out at this age, or being made a consort / second wife. I imagine the author didn’t want to be seen as guessing how they felt, but it would have brought a bit more of a human element.

The book’s closing chapters are difficult reading. The royal family’s expulsion was so abrupt that books and toys lay scattered across Puyi’s abandoned bedroom. Britain’s refusal to offer sanctuary had massive repercussions, pushing a young man who longed for Oxford, British style clothing and adopted the name Henry toward Japanese control. Wanrong’s descent into opium addiction, initially prescribed for menstrual pain, and the loss of her murdered baby are devastating. French’s focus on the “Twilight” years leaves the post expulsion period fairly short. What happened to Puyi, Empress Wanrong and Consort Wenxiu is unfortunately summarised in a few paragraphs and I did wish for more. I greatly enjoyed this book and wished only for a fuller exploration of their later lives. The Last Emperor of China offers a balanced and humane portrait of a vanished artificial world, revealing the two foreign tutors whose presence briefly brought structure, stability and a sense of normalcy to the imperial household.

This book was provided by St. Martin’s Press for review.

[Angie Miale]

The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City by Paul French

I can’t quite call myself a history buff—maybe an aspiring history buff—but I love finding pockets of history that I know almost nothing about. And, like many Americans my age, the history I learned in school was overwhelmingly focused on the United States and Europe. So this fascinating little window into early 20th-century China felt almost entirely new to me.

In 1912, after centuries of imperial rule, China became a republic. But an empire doesn’t simply disappear overnight.

There were still remnants of the old imperial world—including Puyi, the last emperor of China, who had been raised from childhood with the expectation that he would rule. No one preparing him for that role imagined that instead of becoming the next emperor of China, he would become its last.

Paul French focuses much of this book on Puyi and his empress, Wanrong, and their strange, sheltered existence inside Beijing’s Forbidden City after the fall of the Qing dynasty. They were living inside a sort of bubble: the empire was gone, yet many of its rituals remained. They still had servants, attendants, elaborate ceremonies, and all the pomp and circumstance of royalty while, just outside the walls, China was attempting to become something entirely different.

The book begins around Puyi and Wanrong’s arranged marriage, and I appreciated French’s warning against viewing their relationship through a Western, happily-ever-after lens. For people of their position, marriage was deeply connected to politics, family, status, and economics. Yet Puyi and Wanrong did form a partnership—and knowing what eventually happens to both of them gives their early years together an especially melancholy quality.

One of the most interesting elements is the glimpse French gives us into everyday life inside the Forbidden City during this twilight period. There are attendants holding umbrellas, enormous staffs maintaining imperial traditions, political maneuvering, and even Western tutors whose own romantic relationship becomes an unexpected subplot. Their correspondence also provides French with an unusual window into this extraordinarily secretive world.

What fascinated me most, though, was the larger question underneath the story: What actually happens to the people left behind when a government—and an entire way of life—is overthrown?

Puyi and the Forbidden City almost become echoes of the old regime. The republic exists, but so does this former emperor who was raised to believe that ruling China was his destiny. Eventually Puyi’s story becomes entangled with Japan, leading to decisions and alliances that would have enormous consequences. At times, it feels as though virtually no one—not the Chinese, not the Japanese, and certainly not Puyi himself—quite knows what to do with this living remnant of a vanished dynasty.

I knew the broadest outline of China’s transition away from imperial rule, but I had never really thought about the messy human aftermath of it. A dynasty can officially end on a particular date, but history doesn’t tie everything up neatly when the calendar changes.

The Last Emperor of China is an intriguing look at that strange twilight: a vanished empire, a new republic, and the people still living inside the echo of what came before.

I’m very grateful to St. Martin’s Press for sending me a free advanced reading copy. The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City publishes August 27, 2026.

[Kelly]

I don’t really know that much about China’s history, so it was interesting to read Paul French’s The Last Emperor of China.

The book feels like the barest snippet in the course of the country’s history, covering primarily the last emperor and empress of China during the years 1922-1924.

Thinking about China, it is easy to think that there were many dynasties that lasted for centuries of its history. In its current state of communism it is easy to associate certain things with the current state.

As I’ve read more about World War II and Japan’s control over much of Asia Pacific, I’ve started to learn more about the different factions that emerged after the war that led to Mao’s rise, but this book is really the first exposure I’ve had to the end of a monarchy in the country.

Not surprisingly, Puyi and his wife Wanrong are but a shadow of their predecessors. The role of governing has been stripped from the Qing dynasty before Puyi is named as the last in his line, so the title is more than honorary, but he is little more than a figurehead, serving as a source of fascination for some and a last hope for even fewer.

This situation serves as an alternative to many of the European monarchies as they currently exist, where the role and working royals continue but authority is limited to nonexistent, and the Russian royal family that was deposed and then executed.

After reading about Puyi and Wanrong, I can’t say that it was a better alternative. Both are only teenagers when they marry, and Puyi in particular is very sheltered from the real world and the events happening outside the Forbidden City, making him naive and vulnerable. Their tutors, Johnston and Ingram, respectively, help provide a bridge by introducing them to newer inventions and popular culture, but none of it is a true replacement for the awareness that comes with being an active participant in the real world.

French paints as much of a picture as he can, based on source material available. A good portion of it comes from Johnston’s memoir, which limits and interprets from his view. And while he seems to have good intentions for Puyi, he also has dreams of property, prestige, and power of his own.

It is an interesting perspective on a transitional period in China, and another reflection of the different ways in which transition in power can occur. In this case making me both envy the pampered lifestyle and pity the naïvety and general helplessness of Puyi and Wanrong before their time at the Forbidden Palace ends. Having a household and staff who does everything to take care of you and apprise you of world events when you have a firm grip on power is one thing. It sets you up for disaster when you don’t.

There were some points during this book where I felt like more familiarity with Chinese culture and history would have been helpful in being able to follow all the information French provides, but in general it is still fairly easy to follow without that knowledge. It also tends to stick to more factual information, so you won’t necessarily gain a perspective about how Puyi or Wanrong felt about their circumstances and arranged marriage, or how their foreign tutors felt about their roles and charges.

A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Candy]

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Puyi ascended the throne at two years old, abdicated at six years old and was expelled at eighteen. He was “a king without a crown, a ruler without a people, a monarch without a realm.”

While he was able to retain the imperial title and live in the Forbidden City (The Great Within), he and his wife, Wanrong, and his consort, Wenxiu, never left The Great Within until expulsion. Given just three hours and told to take only the belongings a servant or two could reasonably carry, Puyi turned to his tutor, Reginald Johnston, to navigate a way through The Great Without.

Johnston was quite an interesting character. He was Puyi’s tutor, but also a friend who brought some of The Great Without to Puyi’s limited and insulated world. Johnston functioned as advisor to Puyi, who grew up pampered and alone, basically uneducated and bored. As a ruler in name only, Puyi worried that the republican government would assassinate him as he was a reminder to the people of the recent monarchy, he cost the government money and served no purpose. Johnston began to open Puyi’s life to alternative possible worlds and guided him in developing critical thinking, earning him the nickname of Old Foreign Buddha. While Johnston was firmly in Puyi’s camp, he was also looking out for himself and not all his recommendations had a rosy ending. For instance, his suggestion that in order to stem the tide of theft, the palace’s treasures should be inventoried and expenses audited led to part of the palace being set ablaze and centuries old treasures being lost forever.

The author takes a different perspective on Puyi’s first marriage to Wanrong. Rather than it being a loveless match, French makes the argument that the couple were friends and lovers, but their match was doomed due to their situation.

After expulsion, Puyi took refuge in Tianjin, became the puppet emperor of Manchukuo, controlled at that time by Japan. This branded him a traitor and after capture by the Soviet Red Army, he was sent to a reeducation camp. Upon his release, he remarried and lived as a commoner, working as a gardener and street sweeper.

In all honesty, I am probably not the audience for which this book was intended. There is a lot of history, and I had a very hard time making it make sense. My interest was primarily in the couple as individuals and as a couple. It took a long time to get there (so much history, of which I will retain little), and while there was a large portion of the book dedicated to their lives during The Great Within exile, there wasn’t much information about their lives after that period.

https://candysplanet.wordpress.com/

[Marie]

I want to start by saying that I found this book incredibly interesting. French's use of primary research material painted a clear and interesting picture of both the Emperor and Empress, while highlighting their relationships with their western tutors. However, I really struggled with this book overall because there appeared to be no structure to the text at all. We switch between learning about the Emperor Puyi, the Empress Wanrong, and their respective tutors, Reginald Fleming Johnston and Isabel Ingram, respectively. Due to this shifting focus, time also did not appear linear throughout the text, and someone who was dead te previous chapter was alive again in the next. I would have much preferred if French had structured the book in two parts, following the Emperor and Johnston, and then one following the Empress and Ingram. It might have made the book a little more cohesive.

Overall, the exploitation of the relationship between Emperor Puyi and the Empress Wanrong, along with their interpersonal relationships with Wenxiu, Consort to Emperor Puyi the most fascinating part of the book. The complicated dynamics of their relationship are due to court politics and their own personal idiosyncrasies, added for a layered exploration of each as individuals.

I also found the implications of colonialistic ideas on the Emperor and Empress to be particularly interesting, but slightly unexplored in the text. French notes that it was unusual for tutors of the Imperial couple to be from Western Countries, but beyond personal preferences and choices, the implications of such a relationship felt a little underexplored.

This is a very interesting book, and I would recommend it to history lovers generally and those interested in royal history specifically. However, go into it viewing the chapters as distinct essays about a period of time rather than a book with a linear story, and you will have a much better experience.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

CONTENT WARNINGS
Graphic: Addiction, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, Classism
Moderate: Bullying, War

[Nancy]

Last year I read Paul French’s Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson and was impressed by his research that dredged up new information which altered my perception of Simpson. I gladly picked up The Last Emperor of China, confident I was in good hands.

French tells the story of a child swept away to the Forbidden Palace to be Emperor–of nothing. The revolution establishing the Republic of China had left him an anachronism, alive only because it wouldn’t look good to assassinate a six-year-old. The severely myopic, lonely Puyi lived in luxury, waited on by eunuchs. He was married off at sixteen to an appropriate empress and given his number one consort. The golden facade of the Forbidden Citymasked the constrained life of the emperor.

The Forbidden City was essentially a grand theatrical stage set rather than any sort of practical home. from The Last Emperor of China by Paul French

The ancient complex was beautiful, with untold rooms filled with generations of rich tribute that had never been inventoried, but the rooms were cold. The royal teens enjoyed tennis, photography, listening to jazz records. Puyi was quite the dandy and dreamed of going to university. But he was essentially in a golden cage.

Puyi and his empress had British teachers of English who became their friends, mentors, and advisors.

It was hard to accept that just over a hundred years ago parents were desexing their sons hoping they could be a government servant! In 1923, Puyi accused the eunuchs of starting a devastating fire. He expelled them from the Forbidden City, leaving 1,500 suddenly destitute, It left the City without the workers who kept it in repair and going.

The boy who never asked to be emperor did not have a happy ending. Puyi wanted to escape to England, but was refused sanctuary. Instead, Japan set him up as emperor in Manchucko. He was eventually arrested by the Red Army, re-educated, and ended up a common worker in the Peking Botanical Gardens. His empress became an addict; they divorced; and she was also arrested.

A wonderful history of the last days of an ancient culture, and the story of a man who had no real agency over his life.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

[Eliza's Reading]

Having never read anything pertaining to the history of the last emperor of china, this title and description peaked my interest right away. Paul French tell this fascinating story in such a way that you feel as though you were a fly on the wall during the turbulent time in 1920s China. You see each of the main subjects of this book, Puyi (emperor), Wanrong (his wife/empress), Reginald Johnson (Puyi’s tutor from Scotland) and Isabel Ingram (Wanrong’s tutor from America) as people who are brought together and become each others lifeline while under house arrest in the Forbidden City. Except for the fact that the Forbidden City was falling apart physically and was being looted of its priceless artifacts, and fires were started to cover up for the stolen property by the Eunuchs, the emperor and empress were living a pretty privileged life until their expulsion. The writing is so descriptive and nonjudgmental that you get a good understanding for what the times were like for those with privilege and those born without. Through his endless hours of research, Paul French is able to weave the story of the history of Puyi who became emperor as a child but never really held much power once the Revolution established the Republic of China. His life was spared because the new government felt killing a child would be distasteful so instead they made an agreement that Puyi would not leave the Forbidden City.

The amount of worldly education that Johnson and Ingram brought into the much sheltered world of emperor Puyi was surprising to me. I couldn’t help but feel sad for Puyi. Im glad French also dove into Puyi’s time in Japan and his acceptance as emperor of Manchucko, the arrest by the Red Army and subsequent time in re-education labor camp, and finally his last years as just a regular worker in the Peking Botanical Gardens. What an incredible chance of fate, to be the last emperor of China.

For anyone interested in the history of China, this book reads like a novel with its beautiful storytelling. I will be picking up more of Paul French’s books in the future. 4.5/5

Thank you, Elliott & Thompson and Paul French for providing this e-ARC via NetGalley for review.

[Kat]

China is a vast country with a rich culture whose roots reach back to the very beginnings of human civilization. A place both fascinating and cruel. A country where women once had their feet bound, their bones broken almost completely; where a woman’s life was worth less than a sack of salt. A country where communism has survived to this day, though to keep it alive, it had to be fused with voracious capitalism. It is also a state where citizen control is nearly perfect — people are always suspected, always watched, and freedom barely exists.
China is a country whose influence stretches across the world: it tells Hollywood what can and cannot appear in films, and it shapes which medicines or clothes reach global markets. Arab countries watch with envy, but they also learn — and slowly begin to do the same.
Yet in the middle of all this, there is always a human being. The ordinary, invisible one, and the one at the top, who draws all the attention. When the dynasty fell, when the monarchy became a republic, and when the communists arrived — what truly happened? What does it look like when a country is turned upside down? And does anyone care about the people caught in the middle?
The last emperor, Puyi, was pushed off the throne as a child. Once adored, he became despised; from brilliance he was thrown into shadow. Suddenly. How does one cope with that? How do you find a place in a world that no longer wants you? Do you cling to the remnants of your former power, try to reclaim it, or surrender completely?
Fortunately — or unfortunately — Puyi had a tutor. A man who supported him, but who may also have been a clever strategist and a manipulator. It is remarkable that so much of this book is based on previously unpublished documents. It gives the story weight and makes it even more compelling. You read it with genuine engagement and pleasure. The questions linger, Google has to work hard, but it doesn’t change the fact that the book is absolutely worth your attention.

[Janine]

An immersive history of the last two years of the Qing Dynasty - Emperor Puyi and Empress Wanrong (whose picture is on the book cover) - before their expulsion in 1924 and becoming the puppet of the Japanese state of Manchuko.

I remember Bernardo Bertolucci’s movie, The Last Emperor, which probably did more to fix the picture of Puyi than any history book. In this book French seems to humanize Puyi and provide a more intimate and textured portrait of a man who has been vilified for his part in the Japanese takeover of a part of China when really he was just a pawn of every government.

French presents a stunning portrait of the Forbidden City and the corrupt leavings of the Qing. He also shows Puyi and Wanrong under the influences of Reginald Johnston, a British historian and tutor, and Isabel Ingram, an American missionary’s daughter and tutor. These two opened the world to Puyi and Wanrong - which concerned the Republican government which controlled the Chinese government between 1922-1924. These two young Chinese people lived in happiness and prosperity never being fully cognizant of their precarious position. The portrait of these two idyllic years includes information about court life, Wenxiu, Puyi’s consort, the eunuch culture and finally what happened to Puyi and Wanrong.

This is my second book by Paul French on China whom I’ve found to have always well researched his topic delivering an excellent historical picture. I appreciated his honing his book on the years when Puyi was happiest to contrast with the miserable end to his life. And finally I had a fine time reading this book - all reasons for my five star review.

Mt thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for allowing me access to this ARC.

[Kate Baxter]

Utilizing written accounts, photographs, and volumes of historical records, author Paul French has crafted an enlightening glimpse into the final years of the lives China's Imperial family within Peking's Forbidden City. Focused on three young people - barely in their twenties, Emperor Puyi, Empress Wanrong, and Consort Wenxiu are bound within the Forbidden City's walls as China's burgeoning Republic is finding its footing outside it. This telling provides glimpses into the frustration, sadness, paranoia, and brief moments of shared joy of these anachronistic characters trapped within the confines of the Imperial grounds while the rest of the world moves forward.

Mr. French's writing is concise, highly descriptive, evocative, and thorough. His research is Herculean in scope. He delivers a concise and informative telling of this tragic story. The vignets of everyday life within the city have a certain amount of charm in their telling. I was moved by the recounting of these final years of the Chinese Emperor Puyi and his Empress Wanrong living within Peking’s ancient Forbidden City - two people caught between two worlds as those world's shifted within the twenty-first century. Highly recommend.

I am grateful to St. Martin's Press for having provided a complimentary uncorrected digital galley of this book through NetGalley. Their generosity, however, has not influenced this review - the words of which are mine alone.


Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication date: November 17, 2026
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Number of Pages: 320
ISBN: 978-1250373465

[Lily]

In this biography of the last emperor of China, Paul French delves into the last years of the Manchu Dynasty and the reign of Emperor Puyi and Empress Wanrong through unpublished letters and diaries that shed new light on their marriage and lives before the imperial family fell from favor. Exploring the royal couple and the Forbidden City in this complicated political period, the book expands on the instability of the 1920s and the dangers the imperial court presented to the last emperor and empress. Unique and informative, the book is well-written and packed with historical details readers will really appreciate. The historical documents and research are incredible and offer really interesting elements into this tumultuous period of history. French’s analysis and selected quotes do a great job emphasizing the role of the court and the Forbidden City in everything that happened, while the unpublished documents bring new sides of the imperial couple to light. A fascinating and contemplative new release from Paul French, this book about the last imperial couple and the fall of Imperial China is a brilliant addition to the current historiography with its use of new documents and insights into Emperor Puyi and Empress Wanrong’s final days in power.

Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the advance copy.

[Gayle (OutsmartYourShelf)]

Aisin-Gioro Puyi - the last Emperor of China, descendent of the Qing dynasty, was overthrown & deposed in 1911/12 at around the age of 5. Apart from a brief restoration in 1917, he was kept sequestered within in The Forbidden City up to 1924 when he was expelled & exiled from China completely. This book focuses on the period of time between his marriage to Wanrong in 1922 & their expulsion in 1924 & their close friendships with their tutors, Reginald Johnston & Isabel Ingram.

This was a completely new subject for me & I found it fascinating. As life began to modernise outside the city walls, the royal court kept going, much reduced in size, but still there as it had been for centuries. It was written in a way that keeps the reader's interest throughout, although I would have liked a little more information on the former Emperor's childhood & how the royal court worked day to day. Looks like I'll have to dig out a few more books for further reading, but this was a good introduction - even for a complete novice to the subject like me. 4.5 stars (rounded up)

SUMMARY:
Research: 4/5 - An engrossing read but I would have liked a little more information on the former Emperor’s childhood & how the royal court worked day to day.
Writing Style: 5/5 - Written in a way that keeps the reader’s interest throughout.
Enjoyment Level: 5/5 - This was a completely new subject for me but I found it fascinating. Need to dig out a few more books for further reading.

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Elliot & Thompson, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

[Debbie]

Thank you to Netgalley for an advance ARC in exchange for a fair review.

Every weekend my daughter sends me the history quiz from the New York Times so we can enjoy learning about history and share our results with each other. I have noticed that I do well with European history but know little about the history of the rest of the world.

With this in mind, when I was sent an invitation from the publisher to read "The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City", I eagerly accepted. This book concentrates on the Emperor, his wife Wanrong and the tutors who taught them English. I found the reading interesting. I learned quite a bit about the Forbidden City and it's ancient customs. I found Wanrong's story particularly tragic.

Puyi's (the last emperor) tutor Reginald Johnston was given quite a bit of attention. Although I understand that he played a key role in Puyi's life, I was not interested in his infatuation with Wanrong's American tutor or his various houses. These parts of the book lagged for me.

I definitely am interested in reading more books about pre-communist China.

[Vanessa]

The Last Emperor of China by Paul French was a very interesting read and I am fascinated by the country, history and the culture of China. This book was excellent, this was was amazing and packed with so much information about how China was in the early 1920's which was shocking!!!!

The Last Emperor was about Puyi who was just a young boy when he became China's youngest ruler and his child bride Wanrong were sequestered within the ancient a city-within-a-city, which was a haven prohibited to all except the imperial family and its scheming courtiers, fawning servants and corrupt eunuchs. Puyi was an emperor without an empire, and he did not know from one day to the next whether he would experience restoration or assassination.

Now, Two years have gone by and the couple was expelled into eternal exile, bringing an end to the centuries-old Manchu dynasty.

"Wow!!!!! and so young to go and live like this!!"

I really enjoyed reading this book and I am glad I had a chance to read and review The Last Emperor by Paul French. Every book I have read by him has been excellect and this one was no different, Another 5 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

[Amy Campbell]

I have of course seen the sublime Bernardo Bertolucci movie The Last Emperor, which is what caught my eye about this biography. It's an incredibly well-researched, cited, and footnoted book that really gives you a sense of the time.

I cared more about the Emperor, Empress, and Consort than I did their tutors, and in particular I felt like Reginald Johnson got way too many pages. He was a canny fellow who knew how to play his cards. I would have liked to know more about Puyi's later life, and that's where I feel like the book fell off. So many unanswered questions that sent me to Google when I should have been able to find them in this book.

I understand this is an unedited galley, but there were many incidents of things repeated almost verbatim a few pages apart and I sincerely hope those are caught.

I appreciate getting the advance copy from St Martin's Press and my opinions are my own.

[Luv2TrvlLuvBks]

Eye opening account of how the internal machinations of different clan factions and outside foreign powers molded Puyi's life. His Empress' life are is explored alongside their married life albeit at a lesser extent.

Fascinating to hear how unlike the Romanovs, this Royal family while not emerging still significant like the Windsors, were allowed to live. Albeit their life style was severely curtailed, they were allowed to live. This was not a dry tome. By drawing from Western sources present during that lifetime with close proximity to these historical figures, the Author infuses what they may have been feeling. Wish, however, that the accounts were not overly lengthy as book took time to wade through.

Result of reading this book? To learn more of the Empress Dowager Cixi.

Thank you St. Martin's Press for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

[Zoe Ngan]

This is an enjoyable read. Puyi is not remembered fondly in Chinese history by any means, but this book gives him life & explains his motives, hesitations, and humiliations.

I will say, however, that Johnston, Puyi’s British tutor, is often portrayed as a "civilising influence" on his charge, which comes across as a very Eurocentric, dated colonial perspective. It falls into the same “superior us, inferior other” mindset seen in books like Heart of Darkness or A Passage to India, wherein Johnston’s concern for Puyi is genuine, but condescending.

It’s arguable that French falls into this because he relies so heavily on Johnston’s memoirs, but in doing so, he echoes Johnston’s prejudices. Johnston can be excused for being a product of his time; I am less inclined to accept the same from French & expected him to be more evaluative.

Honestly, I feel quite badly for Puyi: born into a failing dynasty; used by different emerging parties; and remembered as a traitor. It often feels like he was acted upon for much of his life.

[EmJ]

The Last Emperor or China follows the "rule" of Emperor Puyi and Empress Wanrong. The book also includes the people close to them, including the consort and their personal tutors. I think this novel does a great job of filling in some of the gaps in a tumultuous time in China's history. The author clearly put effort into using primary source materials for his work. He is able to put what happened to them in the context of the larger social and political happenings in China and the world during that time. I found the book very interesting and really enjoyed reading it. This book might not be right for you if you don't know a lot about China's history but if you do I think you will find this a very good read.
Thank you to the author and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Jeanette Durkin]

This book is interesting to me on many levels. I find it fascinating that the story centers on Emperor Piyu and Empress Wanrong- the end of the Manchu ruling house of the Qing dynasty.

Many parts of the book were of particular interest to me. I enjoyed reading about the wedding! The whole scene came to life in my mind: the Phoenix chair being dispatched by the palace eunuchs, the bride wearing a crimson satin dragon and Phoenix wedding robe and then being carried through the streets. The second involved thievery and eunuchs. The third was how most eunuchs came to be. I imagine a lot of men will have difficulty reading about that topic.

The author did an excellent job presenting facts in a non boring way! The photos were a nice bonus!

I was provided a complimentary ARC copy of the book from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Kelly Hollingworth]

This is an absolutely fascinating book about Puyi and Wanrong, the last Emperor and Empress of China and the final chapter in the Manchu Qing dynasty. Abdicating aged 6 in 1912 and then expelled from the walled citadel Forbidden City, Peking in 1924, Puyi led a life of constantly uncertain fate - restoration or assassination. China has always held such intrigue and mystery and this book opens the door ajar. What extensive research the author must have carried out to compile such a piece. I appreciated the included photographs, putting faces to the names and bringing the story even more to light. Whilst the book focuses on the period around the expulsion I was captivated by the After the Forbidden City chapter and was particularly moved by the Epilogue. China holds as much, if not more fascination for me now having read this brilliant book. I highly recommend it.

[Amy]

I very much enjoyed reading this book. The particular challenge about writing about the last emperor I think is deciding what to leave out and how to structure your writing. I think the author managed both of these things well. The main focus didn’t stray too far from the emperor, empress, and their respective tutors during the last few years of their time in the Forbidden City. There was enough context though for the reader to understand the complex nature of what was happening in China at the time. The strength of this book is in its research, and I enjoyed looking through the various source citations.
I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press. This review represents my honest opinion.

[Brandi]

The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City by Paul French is a compelling and accessible work of history that brings the final years of imperial China vividly to life. The author skillfully combines historical research with engaging storytelling, providing insight into the political upheaval, cultural transformation, and personal struggles surrounding the end of the Qing dynasty. I appreciated how the book balanced historical detail with human stories, making complex events easy to follow without losing depth. The vivid descriptions and thoughtful analysis kept me interested throughout. Overall, this is an informative and engaging read that I would recommend to anyone interested in Chinese history, biographies, or the dramatic transition from empire to modern China.

[Morgan Young]

A thorough and academic account of the Forbidden City, Emperor Puyi, Empress Wanrong, Consort Wenxiu, tutors Johnston and Ingram, and many of the palace eunuchs towards the end of the Manchu Dynasty. The structures and interior were well described and I could both visualize what this era must have been like as well as understand many of the political complexities China was experiencing during this time period.
I went into this book knowing absolutely nothing about the subject matter, and I found the book to be informative, chock full of detail, and filled with interesting photos. The only issue I encountered when reading it is that some of the print at the bottom of the pages is so tiny that it was tough for me to read it.

[Debra Schoenberger]

Thank you to Netgalley for providing a copy of this book.

This book intrigued me because I've visited the Forbidden City in China several times and it was interesting to learn about its final days as a home to deposed emperor Puyi and his empress, Wanrong, and their strange, sheltered existence therein after the fall of the Qing dynasty.

The book is heavy in detail and characters but I didn't have any issue remembering who they were. The book is written in short chapters and, although full of detail, always managed to keep my interest to the very end. It was also interesting to read about the influence of the English tutors and companions on the young couple and how little the emperor knew of the outside world.

The photographs also provide a glimpse into a lifestyle that was rarely seen outside the Forbidden city.

[Kiaran]

A sad tale of the last emperor and his empress in Peking in the 1920’s. Unfortunately, the info was detailed in some areas and completely missing in others. For instance, there was interesting ones about the American woman who was the Empress’s tutor but the info abruptly ended after the royal couple was expelled from the Forbidden City in1924. Other than she never saw the Empress again, the info just stopped. Same thing with the couple themselves. A lot of interesting info abut their like in the Forbidden City but very little or nothing after they were expelled. Thanks to #netgalley for the ARC of this book.