Asia House Brexit Series: The Asian views

She was a heroine of our time, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and symbol of courage.Then, in 2010 Aung San Suu Kyi was released from more than seven years’ house arrest and with that her country began to change. Suu Kyi’s biographer Peter Popham describes what happened next in his critically acclaimed new book The Lady and the Generals: Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s struggle for freedom (March 2016).

Travelling across the country, meeting aristocrats, monks and politicians, freedom fighters, punks and rebels, he shows how hope has slowly returned to the lives of ordinary civilians. But he also examines the darker sides of Myanmar, the struggles that have ensued as long-suppressed prejudices have risen to the surface.

The author of the best-selling The Lady and the Peacock (2012), Popham has toured Myanmar as an undercover journalist many times since his first visit to the country in 1991. A foreign correspondent and commentator with The Independent, he covered South Asia (including Myanmar) for a period in the late 90s. Popham interviewed Suu Kyi when she was released from house arrest in 2002, and met her again in 2011 and 2015.

In this talk, Popham provides a fascinating and frank account of Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar today.