All this buzz about a crusty old historian sleeping with the Empress Dowager - can it be worth it? Word is, this crusty old historian - Sir Edmund Trelawney Backhouse for the non-initiated - turned out a final memoir that is both fairly graphic and wickedly funny. We gave you the background on the guy just last week, but if you're intrigued and want to know more, you should get yourself to the Bookworm tonight for the book launch. Editor Derek Sandhaus will be present to discuss these alleged lurid liaisons between Beijing's earliest sexpat and his royal lay.

Meanwhile, Sandhaus was kind enough to give the Beijinger the skinny on the new book:

Life in Beijing offers temptations galore for many young expats, not least of which is its sizeable and hormonally charged gene pool. But far be it from a new phenomenon, it seems that foreigners have been getting it on (and off) in the Capital since well before the advent of Sanlitun bars, online personals and “language partners.”

The Telegraph reports on Decadence Mandchoue, a newly published memoir (Earnshaw Books, edited by Tales of Old Peking author Derek Sandhaus and translated by Wang Xiaoge) by the aptly named turn-of-the-20th-century British sinologist Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse that paints a most decadent portrait of the Qing imperial court: