The British defeat in Burma at the hands of the Japanese in 1942 marked the longest retreat in British army history and the beginning of the longest campaign in the Second World War. It also marked a beginning of the end of the British empire, not only in Burma but also in south and south-east Asia altogether. There have been many studies of the military and civilian experiences during the retreat but this is the first book to look at the way the campaign was represented through the western media: newspapers, pictorial magazines, and newsreels. There were some twenty-six accredited war correspondents covering the campaign, and almost half of them wrote books about their experiences, mostly within a year or two of the defeat. Their accounts were heavily criticized by government officials as being misinformed and sensationalist. More recent historians, on the other hand, have criticized them for being too patriotic and optimistic in their coverage and thus giving the public an unrealistic view of how the war was progressing. This book assesses the validity of these criticisms by using original sources. It is the first book to seriously evaluate the contributions of the war correspondents and will be of value to students of journalism, media history, history and war.
