Burma
The power of BBC’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North
It’s been a good week for fans of TV dramas that are set partly in Syria, feature poetry-lovers confronting extreme…
What a carve up! The British flair for disastrous partition
The ‘Great Partition’ of India in 1947 led to the wider division of Britain’s ‘empire within an empire’ – and to most of the problems plaguing southern Asia today
South Asia in a time of the breaking of nations
Avinash Paliwal’s gripping tale of espionage opens in 1949, with newly independent India, Pakistan and Burma racked by rivalries in one of the most intricately partitioned areas on Earth
The world is finally standing up for Aung San Suu Kyi
It may be an impossible task to restore Aung San Suu Kyi’s reputation, but Burma’s generals have made a sterling…
Myanmar is on the brink of civil war
For more than two months now Myanmar has been convulsed by a burgeoning civil war. The confrontation between the country’s…
Portrait of the Week
Home The target was achieved of vaccinating, by the middle of February, about 15 million people of 70 or over,…
Will Burma’s Buddhist monks help bring an end to the military coup?
In what could transpire to be a significant development, Buddhist monks joined tens of thousands of anti-coup protesters in the…
Coup de grâce
The downfall of Aung San Suu Kyi
Is China’s hidden hand behind the Myanmar coup?
Was China involved in the coup in Myanmar? It seems unlikely, but that does not mean Beijing is blameless. As satisfying…
Will Myanmar’s military get away with their coup?
In 1962 the Myanmar military staged a coup d’etat. Their iron-fisted rule lasted 49 years. On Monday, after a nine-year…
Portrait of The Lady
It’s as ignorant to demonise Aung San Suu Kyi as it was to idolise her
The shape of things to come
To begin not at the beginning but at the end of the beginning. Or rather, to begin at another beginning,…
A soldier’s life
First shown on BBC Scotland, Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love and War (BBC4, Wednesday) was the documentary equivalent of…
When will the West take a stand on the persecution of Muslims?
Anti-Christian persecution, for so long a great untold story, has started to gain the world’s attention. But the suffering of…
Carillion crashes owing £1.5 billion: directors’ conduct is probed
Home Carillion, the construction and service-provider with 20,000 employees and many contracts for the public sector, went into liquidation with…
Portrait of the week
Home In the Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, kept talking of the ‘next generation’. He outlined cuts…
Diary
There was a cloud over the ‘Oldie of the Year’ awards luncheon this week, which was the death only a…
Portrait of the week
Home After the killings in Paris, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that seven terrorist attacks on Britain had been…
Portrait of the week
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, outlined four changes he sought in Britain’s membership of the EU. He wanted to…
The forgotten faithful
It is often said that cricket was ‘a game invented by the English and played by Indians’, and every so…
Diary
‘Please God, make me good, but not yet.’ I know the feeling. As I get older and more deeply retired,…
Wild life
England We dropped off our daughter Eve at her new school in the Midlands and started the long journey…
The Forgotten Army remembered
The British who fought in Burma became known as the ‘Forgotten Army’ because this was a neglected theatre of the…
The new persecution
It’s time the world paid more attention to assaults against Christians
