Out in the midday sun - Margaret Shennan

Told through letters and diaries, this is the gripping story of British Malaya from its days of promise to the end of Empire. A region rich in natural resources such as tin and rubber, fortunes for enterprising Britons were there for the making. But in the 1920s and 30s their enchanted tropical existence allowed colonials to become complacent and the British Government to fail to recognise the rising Japanese threat. In World War II Malaya was thrown to the wolves. After the war the colonials had to dace a new enemy, the Malayan Communist guerrillas and the inevitability of Malayan Independence.