Diary of an American in London

From townandcountrymag.com

By Jill Kargman 

I left the Upper East Side to spend 10 weeks living in the UK. Here’s what I learned

A Snob’s guide to the snobbiest city on earth must, of course, touch upon clubbiness. It’s cute how so much ink has been spilled on New York’s thriving new members’ club boom—London sniffs and says hold my beer.

Yes, there are the old school House of Lords-type places with gold-framed photos of dead white dudes, but since so many alleged aristocrats are actually what I call “Counts Without Accounts,” a chic new batch of clubs have cropped up with no crypt keepers rolling their eyes over the new guard and clutching pearls over assessments.

London makes NYC’s private club scene look like child’s play so I felt a bit like a bit like a fish out of water in terms of the Eton scene (which, as the summer progressed I realized was NBD). While the States has overlap with 5 Hertford and the Twenty Two, which offer global memberships, there’s also Mayfair’s Maison Estelle and its countryside outpost, Estelle Manor, giving Saltburn revelry, and hipster Camden club House of Koko, which offers expat memberships for considerably less than locals and has amazing food, a raging rooftop, and access through a secret staircase to the famed nightspot Koko, cutting the often-gargantuan line.

                                                                                                                          Rob Pinney//Getty Images
               5 Hertford Street in London, a private club owned by Robin Birley, who recently opened Maxime’s in New York City

Outside the club world, the restaurant scene is adopting the same social sieve. Of course, there have always been eateries with hard-to-score tables, but how about a social ladder you have to climb where you have to dine four times before you get to the secret, better restaurant? This is precisely the trend taking off in London, which will undoubtedly trickle across the pond. I call it the Birkin Model of Dining.

For example, Urchin, the super-cool sushi restaurant that pops up at night in a Holland Park supermarket, is one of the toughest rezzies to land. But that’s just the first stop on a culinary Everest; once you dine at Urchin multiple times, you’re invited to attend a Tuna Fight Club, a weekly event with a 250-pound fish that gets cut up in front of guests and served in 10 courses. Newcomers to that then have to return for the “regulars” night, which presumably has even more bells and whistles.

Similarly, my favourite spot in town, The Fat Badger, is a speakeasy above the owner’s Notting Hill pizza joint, Canteen. You walk through a doorway, past a kitchen, up wooden stairs (past their rollicking pub with live music and one of the best grilled cheeses “toasties” I’ve ever had). Upstairs, in a charming, wood-panelled room, you get what you get and you don’t get upset. There’s not a menu in sight, and if you think everyone gets the same thing, you’d be wrong— regulars are offered the famed pork chops and virgins are not. You can’t sit with us! My husband had major food jealousy and somehow charmingly lobbied successfully for the off-menu specialty. We became more accustomed to the swanky food ladder as we learned more about each niche but with so many incredible places, it’s not our style to beg for tables (or handbags).

                                                                                                                         David Loftus
                                                                            The dining room at The Park in London

There’s only so much jockeying a girl can do, though. As a Yank in London for 10 weeks, I saw this trend and instead looked to local friends for tips with easier access. Trinny Woodhall, the cosmetic and skincare entrepreneur, recommended The Park, Jeremy King’s new place, where breakfast is the move (or so I hear; I don’t eat breakfast!) . Gold in Notting Hill was recommended by producer Celine Rattray— he charred cauliflower the size of a human head is the best I’ve ever had!—and Kiyo Taga, Cartier’s head of special projects, loves The Summerhouse at Little Venice for seafood and Chisou on Woodstock Street for Japanese. My other fave restaurants are St. John for hearty British fare, Wiltons, a Mayfair seafood classic, and BRAT in Shoreditch, with a wood-burning oven churning out hot delicious bread and a burnt cheesecake for dessert that I still dream about.

                                                                                         Peter Dazeley//Getty Images

                                              When it comes to shopping in London, Jill says “there’s no place more joyful than Liberty.”

But there is a world beyond food. For shopping, there’s no place more joyful than Liberty, which is always my first stop in London—it’s so quintessentially British and I feel baptized as a temporary local the second I see the wooden-beamed Tudor ceiling. For New Yorkers who miss Jeffrey and Parisians haunted by the ghost of Colette, there is Brown’s, a concept store with avant-garde designer selects and one of the best jewelry cases in town; it’s tied with Dover Street Market. Naturally, there are baubles at Boodles, plus all the flagships we have in the U.S. lining Bond Street, but for vintage jewelry lovers, there’s S.J. Phillips on Bruton Street. For the gents, director Paul Feig recommends Turnbull & Asser for ties and pocket silks and Anderson & Sheppard and Kent & Haste for bespoke suiting. My late father loved his John Lobb shoes, and of course, while we have Ralph Lauren at home, the New Bond Street store has a fab flagship feel. For slightly less traditional, edgier male vibes, I love the offbeat tailor Beggars Run, nestled on Charlotte Road in Shoreditch.

None of the above places are cheap, so I’d like to take the opportunity to note that the best things about living in London truly were free: the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Tate, and the National Gallery. Walks in the immaculately manicured parks were heavenly and I had a pit in my stomach when it was time to leave. Don’t worry, I didn’t become one of those American jerks who said flat instead of apartment, but I did leave a chunk of my heart on the West End—and I can’t wait to go back.

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/travel-guide/a66542540/exclusive-london-travel-guide-restaurants-shopping-clubs/

After the War: Author and Aid Worker Claudia Krich Challenges the Myths of Vietnam

From msmagazine.com

By Ava Slocum

In her book Those Who Stayed, Claudia Krich revisits her 1975 diary and reclaims the story of Vietnam’s aftermath

American humanitarian worker Claudia Krich—co-director of the American Friends Service Committee medical relief program from 1973 to 1975—was one of only a handful of Americans who stayed in Vietnam past April, 30, 1975, after the war ended. (She and her husband finally left in July 1975.)

Krich kept a daily journal recording her life in Saigon watching the collapse of the South Vietnamese government and the transition from war to peace. In the July 1976 print issue, Ms. published an excerpt of her Vietnam War diary.

Fifty years later, in April 2025, Krich published her full journal from those months in Vietnam. Those Who Stayed: A Vietnam Diary, now available from the University of Virginia Press, combines Krich’s 1975 diary—including the sections published in Ms.—with extra historical content and some first-person accounts by people mentioned in or relevant to the book.

Published in April, Those Who Stayed is Claudia Krich’s firsthand account of the collapse of the South Vietnamese government.

To celebrate the book’s release earlier this year, Claudia Krich communicated with Ms. about her book and her experiences as an American woman living and working in Vietnam during this historic moment.

Ava Slocum: This book is unique because it covers a time period that almost no Americans, even Americans who were in Vietnam during the war, have any context for. How did you start keeping this record? Did you always know you were going to publish it?

Claudia Krich: We ran a large civilian physical rehabilitation centre in a town called Quảng Ngãi, making and fitting patients with artificial legs and arms, wheelchairs, crutches and so on. We also hosted visiting journalists, politicians and historians. Part of my job [as co-director of the American Friends Service Committee relief program] during the more than two years I was there was to keep in touch with our main office in Philadelphia and to keep them informed. We wrote lengthy, detailed letters regularly.

Claudia Krich, Julie Forsythe and Sophie Quinn-Judge with three North Vietnamese soldiers in May, 1975. Krich, kneeling at bottom left, was one of just three American women who stayed in Vietnam post-war. (Courtesy) 

Toward the end of the war, there was beginning to be panic in Quảng Ngãi, and all communication had broken down. The town had one phone, in the post office, and it wasn’t working, and the mail service stopped, and telexes and telegrams couldn’t be sent or received. 

We went to Saigon, where we had similar communication problems. I thought that in addition to writing letters I should start keeping a diary to record what was going on, because I realized it could be momentous and historic. I was certainly not thinking about a book. I was just thinking about documenting what we thought would be the end of the war, and it was. 

Slocum: How did the book come about so many years later?

Krich: The specific reason I finally turned my journal into my book was really the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick documentary. It left in place the idea that there was a violent communist bloodbath and that millions of people were murdered after the war ended. But that simply was not true. They unfortunately neglected to interview any of us Americans who stayed, or even any French or Italians or Indians who also stayed. I wish they had.

I originally thought my journal alone was enough to publish as a book, but for a university press (University of Virginia) I also needed to have historical annotations, a complete index, a glossary, table of contents, etc. It was a lot more work, but I am glad I added those, because I think it is much more interesting, and more useful for students of history.

Slocum: What do most people not understand about the war? Are there any assumptions you’re hoping to challenge with this book?

Krich: People think that the war was North Vietnam versus South Vietnam, but that’s not true. The war in the south, where our troops were, was the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese government versus the North Vietnam-supported National Liberation Front, also called the Provisional Revolutionary Government.

There were actually four main political groups: South, North, Liberation Front (in the south), and the Third Force (also in the south) which was an informal coalition of anti-war people. Those last three groups viewed the American military as invaders and wanted them out. They wanted the country reunified. Vietnam was one country until 1954 when it was temporarily divided by the Geneva Accords. There was supposed to be an election in 1956 but we got involved and prevented it.

The Provisional Revolutionary Government was the official government of South Vietnam for about a year after the war ended and the country was officially unified.

Slocum: In your book, you write about your experiences as a woman aid worker, including losing a pregnancy and getting medical care. How do you think being a woman affected your time in Vietnam?

Krich: I never really thought about being a woman and how it might have been different from being a man. Vietnamese culturally are respectful to strangers, and they were respectful to me as a woman. I was never harassed or “eyed” by Vietnamese men as I’ve been by Americans and others.

One of my personal tragedies was losing a pregnancy at six months. I’d been with one of our patients and her sweet little daughter who was sick with a very high fever and a rash. Then she died. A few days later, I developed the same symptoms, which led to me losing my unborn boy. It wasn’t until later that testing showed the cause was German measles. There was no vaccine then. I don’t understand people who fear immunizations over the illnesses they protect against. 

Our Vietnamese friends and staff were very caring and sympathetic. Everyone had experienced pain and suffering and loss. There’s a term in Vietnamese, “chia buồng,” that means “share sadness.” In our town, everyone was familiar with chia buồng.

Another experience I had was that despite birth control I got pregnant too soon after that loss. I still had a serious infection and thought the best plan was to have an abortion. I went to see a male, French doctor in Saigon. He was furious at me and refused, while at the same time, he confirmed that I still had the serious infection that needed treatment with antibiotics, but he wouldn’t prescribe antibiotics, because I was pregnant. He saw no irony in that. And now we’ve lost our right to abortion in our own country.

Slocum: You recount in your book an incident where you were injured after stopping your motorcycle to avoid a toddler in the road. Local women thanked you for your restraint—saying (male) soldiers wouldn’t have done the same. What did you take away from that experience?

Krich: Unfortunately, the local population had many negative experiences with American soldiers, including this incident the women told me about as they helped me up and treated the cut on my leg with their little bottles of mercurochrome [an antiseptic]. There were many incidents of men soldiers harming civilians during this war. American soldiers often couldn’t distinguish Vietnamese allies from enemies.

The entire province of Quảng Ngãi was designated by the U.S. a “free fire zone,” meaning everyone in it was considered a possible enemy and could be killed without any repercussions. We lived near Mỹ Lai, the site of the “Mỹ Lai Massacre,” where in 1968 American troops killed hundreds of innocent people and threw their bodies into a ditch.

I myself never saw American soldiers because when I arrived in Vietnam all U.S. troops had been withdrawn after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973. In fact, the U.S. had declared the war over before I went to Vietnam, so I did not expect to be in the middle of a war.

Slocum: You were in Vietnam with the American Friends Service Committee, which is a Quaker group. You mentioned that a Mennonite group was there too. What was it like to work with Quaker aid workers?

Members and supporters of the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) hold a “meeting of worship” sit-in outside the White House on July 7, 1969, as a delegation continues a discussion of Vietnam policy with presidential advisor Henry Kissinger inside. (Bettmann Archives / Getty Images)

Krich: Our American Friends Service Committee program was a Quaker program by definition, although not all of us were Quakers. People referred to us in general as “the Quakers.” Quakers are pacifists who are definitely not passive. They believe in non-violent solutions, non-violent resistance and non-violent protest. They are against war, but they set up programs in war zones to help the victims and people suffering from war.

One of my five teammates in Quảng Ngãi, Rick Thompson, was a Quaker and could have gotten out of the draft as a conscientious objector, but instead he burned his draft card as a moral and political statement and then came to Vietnam as a humanitarian aid worker. He died in a plane crash in Vietnam in 1973. Other American men, as you know, claimed they had bone spurs to get out of the draft.

My husband Keith Brinton, was with our program in Vietnam for over five years, the first two years as a conscientious objector doing what’s called “alternative service,” and then he stayed on.

The Mennonites who were there when I was were doing similar work, had similar beliefs, and were our close friends.

Slocum: What are you hoping people will take away from this book?

Krich: I would like my book’s readers to recognize the adventure as much as the risk of what I did. It was exciting as well as meaningful. It was also mundane, because in any war situation, people try to carry on with their lives as best they can. I hope readers will see the bravery of the Vietnamese, and I don’t mean only those who stayed. Those who left, for whatever reasons, were also personally very brave. War had disrupted the lives of everyone.  I hope my book motivates more people to travel, to take risks, to be outspoken, to record what they experience, to defend our rights, and when necessary, to protest and resist. It’s a lot to hope for, but maybe my book will make a small difference.    https://msmagazine.com/2025/10/16/vietnam-war-women-workers-humanitarian-aid/ 

Read what a Chinese officer wrote of D-Day in his diary salvaged in Hong Kong

From theintelligencer.com

By JOHN LEICESTER and KANIS LEUNG

OUISTREHAM, France (AP) — The captain of the giant Royal Navy battleship called his officers together to give them a first morsel of one of World War II’s most closely guarded secrets: Prepare yourselves, he said, for “an extremely important task.”

“Speculations abound,” one of the officers wrote in his diary that day — June 2, 1944. “Some say a second front, some say we are to escort the Soviets, or doing something else around Iceland. No one is allowed ashore."

The secret was D-Day — the June 6, 1944, invasion of Nazi-occupied France with the world’s largest-ever sea, land and air armada. It punctured Adolf Hitler’s fearsome “Atlantic Wall” defences and sped the dictator’s downfall 11 months later.

The diary writer was Lam Ping-yu — a Chinese officer who crossed the world with two dozen comrades-in-arms from China to train and serve with Allied forces in Europe.

For 32-year-old Lam, watching the landings in Normandy, France, unfold from aboard the battleship HMS Ramillies proved to be momentous.

His meticulously detailed but long-forgotten diary was rescued by urban explorers from a Hong Kong tenement block which was about to be demolished. It is bringing his story back to life and shedding light on the participation of Chinese officers in the multinational invasion.

Sau Ying Lam poses with a photo of her father Lam Ping-yu on the beach in Ouistreham, France, on Saturday Oct. 4, 2025.     John Leicester/AP

As survivors of the Battle of Normandy disappear, Lam’s compelling first-hand account adds another vivid voice to the huge library of recollections that the World War II generation is leaving behind, ensuring that its sacrifices for freedom and the international cooperation that defeated Nazism aren’t forgotten.

“Saw the army’s landing craft, as numerous as ants, scattered and wriggling all over the sea, moving southward,” Lam wrote on the evening of June 5, as the invasion fleet steamed across the English Channel.

“Everyone at action stations. We should be able to reach our designated location around 4-5 a.m. tomorrow and initiate bombardment of the French coast,” he wrote.

Breakthroughs

Sleuthing by history enthusiasts Angus Hui and John Mak in Hong Kong pieced together the story of how Lam found himself aboard HMS Ramillies and proved vital in verifying the authenticity of his 80-page diary, written in 13,000 wispy, delicate Chinese characters.

Hui and Mak have curated and are touring an exhibition about Lam, his diary and the other Chinese officers — now on display in the Normandy town of Ouistreham.

An exhibit on display shows members of a Chinese contingent of naval officers who travelled to Europe in World War II to train with British forces, including Lam Ping-yu, who kept a diary and is shown by a blue arrow, in Ouistreham, France, Oct. 4, 2025.     John Leicester/AP

One breakthrough was their discovery, confirmed in Hong Kong land records, that the abandoned 9th-floor flat where the diary was found had belonged to one of Lam’s brothers.

Another was Hui’s unearthing in British archives of a 1944 ship’s log from HMS Ramillies. A May 29 entry recorded that two Chinese officers had come aboard. Misspelling Lam’s surname, it reads: “Junior Lieut Le Ping Yu Chinese Navy joined ship.”

Lost, found and lost again

Lam’s leather-bound black notebook has had a dramatic life, too.

Lost and then found, it has now gone missing again. Hui and Mak say it appears to have been squirreled away somewhere — possibly taken to the U.S. or the U.K. by people who emigrated from Hong Kong — after the explorers riffled through the apartment, salvaging the diary, other papers, a suitcase, and other curios, before the building was demolished.

But Hui, who lived close by, got to photograph the diary’s pages before it disappeared, preserving Lam’s account.

“I knew, ‘Okay, this is a fascinating story that we need to know more about,’” he says.

“Such a remarkable piece of history ... could have remained buried forever,” Mak says.

They shared Lam’s account with his daughter, Sau Ying Lam, who lives in Pittsburgh. She previously knew very little about her father’s wartime experiences. He died in 2000.

“I was flabbergasted,” she says. “It’s a gift of me learning who he was as a young person and understanding him better now, because I didn’t have that opportunity when he was still alive.”

A lucky escape

Lam was part of a group of more than 20 Chinese naval officers sent during World War II for training in the U.K. by Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang led a Nationalist government in China from 1928 to 1949, fighting invasion by Japan and then Mao Zedong’s communists, before fleeing to Taiwan with the remnants of his forces when Mao’s insurgents took power.

On their long journey from China, the officers passed through Egypt — a photo shows them posing in front of the pyramids in their white uniforms — before joining up with British forces.

This handout photo provided by Huang Shansong, son of Huang Tingxin, one of the 24 officers sent to Britain, Chinese naval officers pose for a photo in front of a pyramid on Sept. 8, 1943, in Egypt during their journey to Britain for training. (Huang Shansong via AP)     AP

In his diary, Lam wrote of a narrow brush with death on D-Day aboard HMS Ramillies, as the battleship’s mighty guns were pounding German fortifications with massive 880-kilogram (1,938-pound) shells before Allied troops hit the five invasion beaches.

“Three torpedoes were fired at us,” Lam wrote. “We managed to dodge them.”

His daughter marvels at the lucky escape.

“If that torpedo had hit the ship, I wouldn’t be alive,” she says.

Through ships’ logs, Hui and Mak say they’ve confirmed that at least 14 Chinese officers participated in Operation Neptune — the 7,000-vessel naval component of the invasion which was code-named Operation Overlord — and other Allied naval operations as the Battle of Normandy raged on after D-Day.

FILE - This photograph is believed to show E Company, 16th Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, participating in the first wave of assaults during D-Day in Normandy, France, June 6, 1944. (Chief Photographer's Mate Robert M. Sargent, U.S. Coast Guard via AP, File)     AP

Operation Dragoon

Some of the officers, including Lam, also saw action in the Allied invasion of southern France that followed, in August 1944.

“Action stations at 4 a.m., traces of the moon still visible, although the horizon is unusually dark,” Lam wrote on Aug. 15. “Bombardment of the French coast started at 6, Ramillies didn’t open fire until 7.

“The Germans put up such a feeble resistance, one can call it nonexistent.”

France awarded its highest honor, the Légion d’honneur, to the Chinese contingent’s last survivor in 2006. Huang Tingxin, then 88, dedicated the award to all those who travelled with him from China to Europe, saying “it was a great honour to join the anti-Nazi war,” China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported at the time.

Lam’s daughter says their story remains inspirational.

“It talks about unity, talks about hard work, about doing good,” she says. “World War II, I think it shows us that we can work together for common good.”

Leung reported from Hong Kong

https://www.theintelligencer.com/news/world/article/a-lost-d-day-diary-reveals-chinese-role-in-the-21103236.php