Talking of Mollie Panter-Downes and WW2 Asia….

I noted yesterday having just read Mollie Panter-Downes’s wartime London diaries. I wish I’d read them a bit sooner. Last year I wrote a couple of articles for The Diplomat magazine to chime with the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Asia and the fact that with the shake out of the leading cliques across the continent in 1945 and the blow done to European colonialism in the region things would never be the same again…The Lingering Ghosts of World War Two in Asia and The Rise of Asia’s Post-War Political Dynasties.

At the time I was keen to try and recall an apposite quote from someone in Europe acknowledging this at the time it was happening. I think I did recall one from Malraux, but Panter-Downes (below) was even more succinct in March 1942….

“Few intelligent Britons think that (post-war) Asia will settle down into the cosy old pattern of Empire, with mad dogs and Englishmen in sole enjoyment of the midday sun.”