Forgotten Voices of Burma
By Julian Thompson
Ebury Press £18.99, 400 pages
FT Bookshop price £15.99

First-hand accounts from the second world war conflict in Burma are each preceded by the soldier’s name, rank and battalion in Forgotten Voices. The format works well, with stories told solely through the words of those who experienced the fighting.

“When the British met the Japanese in battle, their prejudiced opinions of the enemy as inferior suffered a severe shock ... Man for man [they] were better soldiers than the Germans,” warns Thompson in his introduction. But this is no preparation for the graphic descriptions of violence that follow.

Often, the soldiers’ honest testimonies were told only to a single archivist, giving them an intimacy that is all too clear to the reader.