The Press: China Frees an Enigma

A pale figure tottered across the single-span Lowu Bridge last week and stepped onto the platform of the Hong Kong border railroad station. No Westerner had seen him since November 1969. No one knew precisely why the Chinese Communists had detained him or where he had been held. As he fainted before welcoming officials and was whisked away to a hospital, no one knew what strange new yarns Francis James, 54, would thread into an already bizarre journalistic career.

James had been a flamboyant and puckish personality in Sydney. He used an old Rolls-Royce...

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