Will the bad luck of the Philippines ever turn?

The Philippines is the odd man out in Asia, a predominantly Catholic country colonised first by Spain, then the United States. An archipelago with more than 2,000 inhabited islands on the cusp of the Indian and Pacific oceans, its strategic location is obvious. Yet it receives scant coverage in the British media beyond its natural disasters, the flamboyance of its leaders, whether Imelda Marcos or Rodrigo Duterte, and its long-running Marxist and Muslim insurrections. On a more mundane level, our encounter with its people will most likely be through the care they provide within the NHS.

Philip Bowring, a former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, for many years the outstanding English-language magazine on Asia, provides a much fuller picture. His book divides into two parts. The first is a potted history of the country up to the end of Duterte’s term of office; the second analyses different aspects of Filipino society, whether education, the economy, migration, the Muslim minority, Christianity, domestic politics or foreign affairs.