Noble House (disambiguation)

Noble House may refer to:

See also

Noble House

Noble House is a novel by James Clavell, published in 1981 and set in Hong Kong in 1963.

It is a massive book, well over 1000 pages, with dozens of characters and numerous intermingling plot lines. In 1988, it was adapted as a television miniseries for NBC, starring Pierce Brosnan. The miniseries updates the storyline of the novel to the 1980s.

The Noble House also is a nickname of Struan's, the trading company featured prominently in most of Clavell's novels.

Plot summary

Noble House is set in 1963. The tai-pan, Ian Dunross, struggles to rescue Struan's from the precarious financial position left by his predecessor. To do this, he seeks partnership with an American millionaire, while trying to ward off his arch-rival Quillan Gornt, who seeks to destroy Struan's once and for all. Meanwhile, Chinese communists, Taiwanese nationalists, and Soviet spies illegally vie for influence in Hong Kong while the British government seeks to prevent this. And nobody, it seems, can get anything done without enlisting the aid of Hong Kong's criminal underworld. Other obstacles include water shortages, landslides, bank runs and stock market crashes.

Noble House (miniseries)

Noble House is an American television miniseries that was produced and broadcast by NBC in 1988. Based on the novel Noble House by James Clavell, it features a large cast headlined by Pierce Brosnan as business tycoon Ian Dunross and was directed by Gary Nelson. However, due to time restrictions, several of the many subplots from the book were removed.

This is NBC's second miniseries adaptation of a Clavell novel, the first being 1980's Shōgun. Both take place in the same fictional universe with Noble House featuring connections to Shōgun and another Clavell work, Tai-Pan.

For the miniseries, the timeframe of the novel was changed; Clavell's original novel takes place in the early 1960s, but the miniseries was updated to the 1980s. The building prominently displayed and used as Struan's is Jardine House.

Synopsis

Despite its impressive history and its reputation, the international trading company Struan's (the Noble House of the title) is in trouble. Overextended by the previous management, new Tai-Pan Ian Dunross (Pierce Brosnan) has had to issue public stock to improve the company's financial standing. Even this, however, has not given him the capital he needs. As a result he is courting a private investor, American billionaire Linc Bartlett (Ben Masters). Bartlett decides secretly to back Dunross' arch enemy, Quillian Gornt (John Rhys-Davies), who will stop at nothing to destroy Struan's. When Dunross realises that Gornt is suddenly strong enough to ruin the Noble House, he must urgently forge new alliances or reshape ancient ones. He romances Bartlett's second-in-command, Casey Tcholok (Deborah Raffin).