The range of the book: from wartime England to colonial Assam; from
sapper training in India to jungle warfare in Malaya - Tea, Love and War
tells the unique true story of the child of an exploited village woman
gaining recognition and acceptance in suburban England. It is split into
three parts: Stuart and Mary's story, David's story, and Ann's story.
Stuart, working on a tea estate in the jungles of Assam, fathers a child
by a teenage native woman. Stuart's letters to his family in pre-war
England vividly describe his life as a planter in colonial India but
conceal his secret love life. When war breaks out, Stuart joins the
Indian army, trains as a sapper and is posted to Malaya, blowing bridges
in the desperate rearguard action against the Japanese invasion. Back in
wartime England, his sister Mary marries Stuart's best friend, Arthur,
who decides to train as an army officer. Mary, now a young mother
pregnant with her second child, tells of the year's delay in hearing
news of her brother's death at the fall of Singapore. Before the child
is born, she learns that Arthur has been killed in action in Italy. The
story switches to a jungle village in Assam where a small Anglo-Indian
child named Ann fights her way through poverty and discrimination,
always seeking the identity of her father and his family. Tea, Love and
War is a gripping true story, narrated by Mary through her son David.
"Much of the text is taken from the many exercise books that she filled
with her memories, and whilst my investigations have expanded and
updated her story, the history of the relevant elements of the Second
World War, the Blitz and public perception of the Malayan campaign
leading to the fall of Singapore are more eloquently seen from her
individual viewpoint." The book will appeal to fans of autobiographies,
history and social history - Anglo-Indian culture and exploitation of
women in India are key themes in the text - and has been inspired by
Wild Swans.
