Sue Arnold has two British grandfathers and two Burmese grandmothers. She herself looks Burmese but sounds impeccably English. It was a conundrum she had never considered exploring until assigned by the Observer to cover a royal tour to China in 1985. The opportunity to stop off in Burma on the way home was irresistable. Thus began a quest for her ancestors which grew the more convoluted and surprising the further she delved into her family story. In doing so she has unravelled a tale of two worlds which the Anglo-Burmese straddled between the world wars. There are the tours of duty with elephants in the teak forests, and the grandmother who let her jewels down into a lake on a rope to hide them from the advancing Japanese, before whom Sue Arnold's own mother fled to India. She describes the hazards of mother and small daughters making their way in a class and colour-conscious postwar London. But to add to this, visits to Burma introduce her to a whole new quite unexpected Burmese family, the result of both her Burmese grandmothers remarrying.