Hunting Horns - Cloud Over Hong Kong

Agnes thought I was a complete failure...a sort of Oxford dilettante, pansying around...and she was always for something tough, something vigorous. Agnes was tremendously dynamic and proletarian and outspoken.

– James Bertram on American revolutionary activist Agnes Smedley

Well, who wants to be behind a machine gun? But if you're defending against people like the Japanese you fight, you don't just pack up.

– Journalist and ex POW James Bertram on what compelled him to fight in the 1941 Japanese invasion of Hong Kong

[Christopher] Isherwood was terribly English public school, he had blinkers in certain respects and I don't think he cared to get too close to the real blood and mess.

– James Bertram on English writer Christopher Isherwood's time in China before WWII

I think the first thing anyone feels after coming back to New Zealand after years abroad is how smug and self-satisfied most people are...I think for me it was interesting to see what the Labour Government had done and at the same time it was a shock to find how narrow views were, certainly how narrow political views were.

– James Bertram on returning to New Zealand in 1939, after an intense period living in China and Hong Kong

...Japan would jump when she chose to, and Australia and New Zealand would be among the targets, but nobody wanted to hear that.

– Bertram on trying to raise the alarm in Australasia about the threat Japan posed before WWII

Hunting Horns was made for a budget of $25,000, scarcely more for 150 minutes of material than television had provided previously for one 50-minute production. Screened at 10:30 at night on TV1, which of course was too late for many, the programme was nonetheless "well received — not with any enthusiasm by television but with a lot by others of more substance in the community", according to [producer John] O'Shea.

– John Reid, in his 2018 book Whatever It Takes - Pacific Films and John O'Shea 1948-2000, page 257