He can perhaps best be described as the first generation "global citizen" - long before the term was even invented. The only child of a British engineer who was posted to Malaysia in the 1950s, Professor Kirkpatrick lived there from when he was 18 months old until his teens. He was therefore fluent in Malay apart from his mother tongue. Much as he loved his adopted country, in the absence of a well-developed international school system, Professor Kirkpatrick had no choice but to return to the UK for his primary and secondary education.

With this background, it is no wonder that he developed a keen interest in Asian studies, ultimately choosing this subject as his course of study.

As East meets West

The Professor's first choice was to study Thai and Indonesian. However, no British university offered such a degree then, so he entered the University of Leeds in 1962 to study Modern Chinese. After earning his double degree in Chinese Studies and History, Professor Kirkpatrick moved yet closer to the Chinese language when he received a one-year scholarship from the British Government, enabling him to land on Chinese soil in August 1976, just two weeks before Chairman Mao died.

He studied modern Chinese and socialist literature at Fudan University in Shanghai, which however, was hardly a culturally or an intellectually stimulating experience. This China "pilgrimage", however, sowed the seeds for his higher-level academic pursuits, which in turn cemented his status as a global citizen.