Facebook Twitter Pinterest <Embed>
FREE Delivery in the UK.
Only 1 left in stock (more on the way).
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
Dispatch to:
France - Mainland
To see addresses, please
Or
Please enter a valid UK postcode.
Or
+ £2.80 UK delivery
Used: Very Good | Details
Sold by betterworldbooksltd
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comment: Ships from the UK. Former Library books. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Your purchase also supports literacy charities.

Have one to sell?
Sell on Amazon
Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more
See all 2 images

The Lady And The Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma Hardcover – 3 Nov 2011

by
Peter Popham (Author)
› Visit Amazon's Peter Popham Page
search results for this author
Peter Popham (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 29 customer reviews
See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions
Amazon Price
New from Used from
Kindle Edition
"Please retry"
£4.99
— —
Hardcover
"Please retry"
£20.00
£6.09 £0.01
Paperback
"Please retry"
£9.48
£2.80 £0.01
This item can be delivered to your selected dispatch location in France - Mainland. Details
Note: This item is eligible for click and collect. Details
Pick up your parcel at a time and place that suits you.
  • Choose from over 13,000 locations across the UK
  • Prime members get unlimited deliveries at no additional cost
How to order to an Amazon Pickup Location?
  1. Find your preferred location and add it to your address book
  2. Dispatch to this address when you check out
Learn more
Top Deals in Books
See the latest top deals in Books. Shop now
£20.00 FREE Delivery in the UK. Only 1 left in stock (more on the way). Dispatched from and sold by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
click to open popover

Frequently Bought Together

  • The Lady And The Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma
  • +
  • Little Daughter: A Memoir of Survival in Burma and the West
Total price: £35.99
One of these items is dispatched sooner than the other. Show details
Buy the selected items together

Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

  • Apple
  • Android
  • Windows Phone

To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number.
Top Deals in Books
See the latest top deals in Books. Shop now

Product details

  • Hardcover: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Rider (3 Nov. 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1846042488
  • ISBN-13: 978-1846042485
  • Product Dimensions: 16.2 x 3.8 x 24.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 367,399 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Review

"Sensitive and moving"--Jon Swain, Sunday Times

"Highly readable...a fresh approach"--Evening Standard

"A portrait both warm and objective... it will not be bettered for a long time"--Independent on Sunday

"An impressive achievement"--Herald Scotland

"Accessible and impeccably researched...a poignant account of Suu Kyi’s life and her efforts to establish democracy in Burma"--The Independent

"Masterly... superb"--Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"The most comprehensive, accessible, honest and fair biography of Aung San Suu Kyi to date, blowing away all previous efforts."--Benedict Rogers, author of Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant

"The definitive and superbly written account of one of the most intriguing and admirable political and moral figures of our times."--Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire

Book Description

The definitive biography of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's pro-democracy leader, now the subject of Luc Besson's film, 'The Lady'

See all Product Description

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

Related Media

Previous page
  1. 1:41
    Now Playing Peter Popham introduces The Lady and the Peacock
Next page

Customer Reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
5 star
23
4 star
3
3 star
2
2 star
1
1 star
0
See all 29 customer reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsThe Lady in 3D
By Steve Weinman on 12 Nov. 2011
Format: Hardcover
Aung San Suu Kyi was elected by a clear majority of the Burmese people to rule her country. The daughter of an enduring Burmese hero, she felt a duty to serve those people, but more than 20 years on she has yet to assume power.

Instead, a succession of self-serving military leaders have ruled Burma illegitimately while keeping ASSK under house arrest for most of those two decades. She could have left the country, but understood that if she did, she would never be allowed back. Staying in her prison was the only way in which she could serve those who continued to idolise her, but this meant sacrificing not only her freedom but her family.

Recently, the military junta has staged phoney elections. It has freed ASSK and a small proportion of its political prisoners in an effort to persuade the world that it has changed its spots. Tired of being a pariah state, its resources have been squandered and it knows there are those outside keen to engage with (and make money from) Burma given the right pretext.

Aung San Suu Kyi has to decide how to play this difficult situation, and it's at this pivotal point that what is by far the best book to date about this fascinating Nobel Peace Prize-winner has been published. I have yawned through worthy but dry biographies of the Lady in the past, but this one just kept me turning the pages. For the first time she emerges as a rounded, flesh-and-blood personality, rather than the remote, almost inexplicable ice goddess depicted before.

This process is certainly helped by Peter Popham's access to the vivid campaign-trail diaries of ASSK's former assistant Ma Thengi, but that's only part of it.Read more ›
Comment 21 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsThe human touch
By Daniel Park on 23 Nov. 2011
Format: Hardcover
Popham's biography of Aung San Suu Kyi is a piece of well-written and carefully crafted research with interviews from the people around her who not only understand her actions, but many of the reasons behind them. These interviews help this biography steal a march on countless predecessors, which - whilst historically and factually accurate - are often anaemic without this human touch.

As always, Suu herself remains forever enigmatic, but that is part of the challenge faced for every biographer. Popham uses his extensive interviews to shed light on the woman trapped within the icon.

I found that some of the details that the author reveals of her earlier "solid and safe and decent" life in Oxford quaintly endearing - when her dreams, whilst doing the washing up, stretched no further than the creditable ambition of launching a chain of public libraries across Burma.

Much has changed in Suu's life since that time, but Popham helps us make sense of it on a much more personal level, which is high praise indeed for any biography on this remarkable lady's life.
Comment 9 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
3.0 out of 5 starsInteresting and informative, though sadly laborious at times
By Mr. Thomas Johnston on 28 Jan. 2012
Format: Hardcover
I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to people who have an interest in Burma or in non violent struggle. I did however find the book hard going at times and often wondered at the value of some of the content. The journalistic style is informative and although I have read a lot about Burma and visited the country just over a year ago I found myself sometimes confused about where the author was leading me. He is clearly a devoted fan of Aung San Suu Kyi, as am I, but I felt this sometimes got in the way of objective research and analysis as well as the telling of the story, especially the impact of the political naivety which was almost inevitably shown in Daw Suu and most, if not all, of her followers in the early days. I wanted to know more about the obvious corruption that underpins the Juntas control and also how democratic nations like India, Thailand and Singapore justify their complicity but those angles were missing. The narrative is engaging and I now understand better the emotional pull that Daw Suu responded to by staying in Burma though the book suffers from her understandable, and well explained, lack of involvement in its development. The treatment of Ma Thanegi made me feel rather uncomfortable and at times it felt as if she was being cast out as a spy on little evidence for daring to differ with Daw Suu's approach to sanctions. I began to wonder if it was somehow not permitted to hold a different view within the ranks of those around Daw Suu and the book owes itself the duty to be more careful and more exploratory about this interesting aspect of the struggle for the right form of democracy for Burma. That said, I found the book informative, at times engaging and well worth the investment of time it took me to plough through its pages. I will certainly read it again and will hopefully find it an easier read on second pass.
Comment 7 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsThe meaning of courage
By Hande Z TOP 500 REVIEWER on 7 Nov. 2011
Format: Hardcover
Three major biographies were published in the last quarter of 2011 - "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, "Deng Xiaoping" by Ezra Vogel, and "The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi". The first concerns a man who delivered access to knowledge as well as nonsense into the palms of virtually everyone on earth. The second transformed a giant country of peasants into savvy businessmen who now owns assets beyond the Great Wall. Who would have imagined during the years of Mao Tze Tung that "Volvo" would have become a Chinese owned company? Against these two massive figures in history, where can one fit the slim, demure woman from Burma?

For someone who spent 15 out of 21 years under detention of one sort or another during the modern era of Burma (an ironic term as we shall see) from 1989 to 2010, there would have been little to write about. As Popham himself wrote, "Aung San Suu Kyi's life tends to be described in a one-dimensional manner, as the story of a courageous woman who challenged a military junta and lost." Furthermore, she was often criticized as a woman who forsook her family for politics, and for running a political fight with no political acumen. She has been perceived as an obstinate person whose intransigence let her followers down. She who, in the 1990 elections found that she had almost the entire nation behind her and yet could not oust the small, bullying, corrupt military Junta. It was the kind of elections the Junta had hoped, in the words of Samir Amin, "to change everything so that nothing changes".

Popham tries to show in this book that the life of Aung San Suu Kyi is much more complex and instructive than the superficial understanding the uninformed might have of her.Read more ›
Comment 11 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse

Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 starsThree Stars

It's OK, but rather slow in developing the background

Published 4 months ago by G Burrows
5.0 out of 5 starsand Suu's struggle for democracy in Burma is well written and yet it...

I really want to know more about Aung San Suu Kyi more and this book is one of the most well researched books I have ever read about her! Read more

Published 5 months ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

pretty well researched

Published 7 months ago by Anthony
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

A1

Published 9 months ago by MR KEN MAULE
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

good

Published 11 months ago by mj goodrich
5.0 out of 5 starsA wonderful woman and a model politician

Interesting - I bought this plus the DVD. Both well worth it.

Published 19 months ago by Anne B
5.0 out of 5 starsBest inside information book on the history of burma with the juntas

excellent and Very detailed

Published 19 months ago by horses
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Excellent product at a very good price.

Published on 3 Oct. 2014 by Mikw
4.0 out of 5 starsICONIC WOMAN OF BURMA IN THE 20TH/21ST CENTURU

I really enjoyed this book, but like a previous reviewer I did find certain parts of the book heavy going. Read more

Published on 17 May 2014 by bibliophile
5.0 out of 5 starsWonderful book. Gives a very in depth view of the very complicated...

Having recently visited Burma for the first time this book filled in a lot of the gaps. Really got to know Suu Kyi as well. Read more

Published on 3 Mar. 2014 by Caroline Corbould

There's a problem loading this menu at the moment.

Learn more about Amazon Prime.

Look for similar items by category

Feedback