Book Chris Patten

Chris Patten, Lord Patten of Barnes, is a British statesman whose public career spans Westminster, Hong Kong, Brussels, the BBC and Oxford. After studying history at Balliol College, Oxford, he went to work for the Conservative Party and won the parliamentary seat of Bath in 1979. Margaret Thatcher brought him into the cabinet as Environment Secretary in 1989, and under John Major he became party chairman and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, steering the Conservatives to an unexpected election win in 1992. That year he became the 28th and final Governor of Hong Kong, guiding the territory through its last five years of British rule before the 1997 handover. He later led the Northern Ireland policing commission born of the peace process, served as European Commissioner for External Relations from 1999 to 2004, chaired the BBC Trust from 2011, and was Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 2003 to 2024. A life peer since 2005 and a Knight of the Garter since 2023, he wrote East and West (1998) and Not Quite the Diplomat (2005). Patten offers audiences rare firsthand insight into China, Europe, diplomacy and leadership.