[WAITLISTED] Lunch with the new President of FCC

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Before the first course is served, Ms Morgan of Foreign Correspondents' Club will lead us through the Old Dairy Farm Depot—one of the last surviving colonial buildings in Central—and peel back the layers of nearly a century of dispatches, debates, and decidedly off-the-record indiscretions.

Established in wartime Chongqing in 1943, the FCC began as a ramshackle sanctuary for correspondents dodging bombs and censorship. When the club decamped to Hong Kong in 1949, it brought with it a certain irreverence that remains etched into the building’s bones. But it was 1963 that changed everything. As war engulfed Vietnam, Hong Kong became the critical rear base for Western media—and the FCC suddenly found itself at the centre of the global story. This was the era when the club truly earned its reputation as the most famous press club in the world: a place where Saigon-bound reporters filed dispatches by telex, fortified themselves with gin, and returned months later—if they returned at all—to find their tab still pinned behind the bar.

What will make it memorable: You will leave not only with the inside story of how the FCC survived the Japanese occupation, the 1967 riots, and the handover—but with something far rarer. Ms Davies will offer a candid reflection on what it actually means to steward this peculiar institution today. Not the official line. Not the press release. Just a genuine conversation about how a club built for wartime correspondents navigates peacetime, relevance, and a city that keeps reinventing itself around it. 

The practical details: Lunch will be at shared cost with the menu circulated in advance.