Guns and poppies

My uncle Edward did not like talking about his service in Burma during the second world war. When I asked him what fighting in the jungle was like, his response was brief. ‘Grown men were crying for their mothers,’ he said, and would say no more: the worst combat theatre of that war was not a subject for children. Meanwhile, in India, my grandparents were taking in British refugees from Burma who had little to say either, being sick and traumatised after fleeing the Japanese over high mountain passes during the monsoon.

Before 1939, Burma was one of Asia’s most prosperous countries. Yangon was the second busiest port in the world (after London) and the country the largest rice exporter. But after the war, its cities were mostly destroyed and its economy ruined. The gist of David Eimer’s pessimistic account is that, nearly 75 years on, Burma (as I shall  continue to call it) has yet to recover its pre-war prosperity.