A fascination for the flamenco guitar took hold of Clive Harvey at the age of five. A great love of history at school provided the understanding that it was the dispersal of peoples across continents that shaped and diversified cultures and their music. Clive was no longer mystified why the flamenco had echoes of Indian scales, North African rhythms, and even Jewish melodies in its personality.

He went on to become a professional musician, applying images to compositions with a view to writing film scores. Picasso, as the most famous Spaniard from the flamenco heartland, was an obvious candidate. He secured a deal with the BBC to produce his first album Portraits of Picasso. He has since expanded the application of music scores to photography and sculpture more of which can be seen on his website “music4art”.

Along came the story of the Chinese Labour Corps into his field of vision which took over everything for two years. How could it be that this unthinkable dislocation of thousands of young men from the other side of the globe could have taken place yet with almost no historic acknowledgement?

Enlisting guidance of military historians and academics, Clive embarked on a debut novel “Yang’s War”. Yang and his cousin Sheng endure the rigours of being wrenched from their homeland, scrubbed shaven and herded onto ships and packed trains, then delivered by their nightmare voyage to the killing fields of Europe.

Yang could not have known that his courageous migration ultimately marked the beginning of the settlement of his people into the fabric of the now thriving Chinese districts throughout Europe’s most iconic cities.

Clive Harvey has written a musical dedication to the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC) also entitled “Yang’s War” as a film score and is exploring the involvement of a Chinese youth choir to add to the chorus and voice-over artist for narration.