An elegant Georgian terrace house in London's Notting Hill Gate, perhaps the most upmarket area for Britain's chattering classes now that Prime Minister Tony Blair and his friends have deserted Islington, may seem an unlikely venue for a counter-revolution against Mao Zedong's revolutionary claims. Yet this is the base for Jung Chang and her husband Jon Halliday's efforts to rewrite and right history.
The house is only a few meters from the busy traffic roaring to and from Oxford Street and the endless upmarket wine bars and coffee shops, but it is on a quiet leafy side street. The street itself has witnessed the vandalism of modern architecture with the creation of an ugly apartment block, like a glaring gold-capped tooth upsetting the neat unity of the row.
Inside their house, Chang and Halliday live and work in donnish style. They are surrounded by books and by tasteful Asian art, including peaceful images of Buddha -- a contrast to the Mao they have just portrayed in their biography of the Chinese leader.