20 Facts About Roderick MacFarquhar

Roderick Lemonde MacFarquhar was a British sinologist, politician, and journalist.

Roderick MacFarquhar served as a Member of Parliament in the 1970s, then joined the BBC.

Roderick MacFarquhar was best known for his studies of Maoist China, the three-volume The Origins of the Cultural Revolution and Mao's Last Revolution.

Roderick MacFarquhar's father was Sir Alexander MacFarquhar, a member of the Indian Civil Service and later a senior diplomat at the United Nations.

Roderick MacFarquhar was educated at the Aitchison College in Lahore and Fettes College, an independent school in Edinburgh.

Roderick MacFarquhar then went on to obtain a master's degree from Harvard University in Far Eastern Regional Studies in 1955, studying with John King Fairbank, who supported his career as a China scholar.

Roderick MacFarquhar worked as a journalist on the staff of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph from 1955 to 1961 specialising in China, and reported for BBC television Panorama from 1963 to 1965.

Roderick MacFarquhar was the founding editor of The China Quarterly from 1959 to 1968, and a non-resident fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, from 1965 to 1968.

Roderick MacFarquhar proved a moderate figure, in line with Brown's views.

Roderick MacFarquhar abstained on a vote to remove the disqualification of left-wing Labour councillors in Clay Cross who had broken council housing laws enacted by the previous Conservative government.

Roderick MacFarquhar acted as Parliamentary Private Secretary to David Ennals, a minister of the state at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and retained the job when Ennals was promoted to be Secretary of State for Social Services.

Roderick MacFarquhar was a member of the Select Committee on Science and Technology.

In 1978 Roderick MacFarquhar resigned his office as PPS after voting against the Government.

Roderick MacFarquhar remained involved in politics and his moderate beliefs made him increasingly uncomfortable in the Labour Party: on 22 October 1981 he announced that he had joined the Social Democratic Party.

Roderick MacFarquhar fought the South Derbyshire seat, which contained most of then-abolished Belper, for the SDP in the 1983 general election, and nearly succeeded in beating the Labour candidate, although the seat was easily won by the Conservatives.

Roderick MacFarquhar was the Leroy B Williams Professor of History and Political Science, Emeritus.

Roderick MacFarquhar was a scholar of Chinese politics from the founding of the People's Republic through to the Cultural Revolution.

Roderick MacFarquhar married Emily Cohen, a journalist and East Asian studies scholar, in 1964.

Roderick MacFarquhar married his second wife, British foreign policy scholar Dalena Wright, in 2012.

Roderick MacFarquhar died from heart failure at a hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 10 February 2019, at age 88.