Tony Banham is a long-term resident of Hong Kong, having arrived in the 1980s. He has been studying the Battle of Hong Kong for well over a decade and has written on the subject, aided in the production of numerous television documentaries, and helped many children of veterans in their researches into their fathers' war years. His first book on the topic, Not the Slightest Chance: The Defence of Hong Kong, 1941, was jointly published by Hong Kong University Press and the University of British Columbia Press in 2003.

a well-composed, far-ranging story, ... a carefully researched book International History Review