I am indebted to several authors whose books helped me to understand present day Myanmar and the Burma of the past.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s Letters from Burma, Rory Maclean’s Under the Dragon, and Shelby Tucker’s Among Insurgents provided potent illustrations of life under military rule in the 1990s.
Richard Rhodes James’ Chindit, Philip Stibbe’s Return Via Rangoon, George Macdonald Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here, Eric Lomax’s The Railway Man and Theodore F. Cook’s Japan at War – An Oral History all, in their different ways, revealed the suffering of those who fought the Second World War in Burma.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to the Burma Star Association and to Arthur Titherington for sharing his painful memories of being a prisoner of the Japanese. Sincere thanks too to Martin Smith for his invaluable advice and assistance prior to my research visit to Myanmar.