The Trouser People

Book excerpt: An unforgettable adventure story of two journeys, one hundred years apart, into the untravelled heart of Burma. Part travelogue, part history, part reportage, The Trouser People is an enormously appealing and vivid account of Sir George Scott, the unsung Victorian adventurer who hacked, bullied and charmed his way through uncharted jungle to help establish British colonial rule in Burma. Born in Scotland in 1851, Scott was a die-hard imperialist with a fondness for gargantuan pith helmets and a bluffness of expression that bordered on the Pythonesque. But, as Andrew Marshall discovered, he was also a writer and photographer of rare sensibility. He spent a lifetime documenting the tribes who lived in Burma's vast wilderness and is the author of The Burman, published in 1882 and still in print today. He also not only mapped the lawless frontiers of this "geographical nowhere" - the British Empire's eastern-most land border with China - but he widened the imperial goalposts in another way: he introduced football to Burma, where today it is a national obsession. Inspired by Scott's unpublished diaries, Andrew Marshall retraces the explorer's intrepid footsteps from the mouldering colonial splendour of Rangoon to the fabled royal capital of Mandalay. In the process he discovers modern Burma, a hermit nation misruled by a brutal military dictatorship, its soldiers, like the British colonialists before them, nicknamed "the trouser people" by the country's sarong-wearing civilians. Wonderfully observed, mordantly funny, and skilfully recounted, The Trouser People is an offbeat and thrilling journey through Britain's lost heritage and a powerful expose of Burma's modern tragedy. AUTHOR: Andrew Marshall is a British journalist living in Bangkok, Thailand, who specialises in Asian topics. He is co-author of The Cult at the End of the World, a study of the Aum Shinrikyo and is a contributor to many daily and weekly publications. SELLING POINTS: One of the most significant and revealing books on Burma published Fully revised and updated edition Includes the author's eyewitness account of the 'Saffron Revolution' of 2007 REVIEWS "A witty, beautifully turned travelogue.. enlivened by Andrew Marshall's eye for the absurd" -The Daily Telegraph "An evocative travel book" -New York Times 30 b/w photographs