Nancy and Roy Evans

China was emerging from Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Across the Pacific, Richard Nixon was desperate to get China to talk. Step forward the doyen of Welsh table tennis, H Roy Evans. He and his wife Nancy were at the forefront of the sport in Europe and the World. So when Chinese premier Zhou Enlai invited him for talks behind the bamboo curtain, he knew something was up. Now Peter Jackson tells the story of how that meeting was the first stepping stone to Nixon’s extraordinary visit to China in 1972, and how the Chinese table tennis team – featuring the greatest players in the world – ended up in Cardiff to play at the Welsh Open Championships. And how the Welshman helped table tennis become an Olympic sport.