Justin Wintle has spent the past three years sorting fact from myth in the saga of Aung San Suu Kyi, so it was understandable when he sighed with relief recently upon announcing that his biography, "Perfect Hostage", was finally on the shelves.
Despite his general familiarity with Southeast Asia and his subject, the work was difficult, primarily because he was not allowed to meet Suu Kyi. Nevertheless, he insists, his painstaking research has produced the most comprehensive biography of her to date.
Wintle, who took his degree in modern history at Oxford University's Magdalen College, has previously written about Vietnam and Indonesia and edited the Rough Guide's "Histories" series. Then in 1989, during a visit to a refugee camp in Thailand's northern Tak province, he became truly aware of the harsh realities on the other side of the border.
That was the year Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest.
"I had a conversation with my agent about the possibility of doing a book on Suu Kyi. What I really wanted to write was a strong narrative that would have a broad appeal and tell a wider readership about what's inside Burma," Wintle says.
He wrote to her, but remains unsure whether his letter got through. Another letter was hand-delivered to Burma's ambassador in London and ignored. Instead, Wintle had to amass a wide range of sources to compensate for Suu Kyi's personal absence from the narrative.
As well, he says, Suu Kyi cannot be understood without understanding the history of her country and her family. He read the seven books and unpublished manuscripts she has written and all of her father Aung San's major speeches and writings, including his sole book, 1946's "Burma's Challenge", as well as every historical and sociological treatise on the country that he could manage.
Still, Suu Kyi's voice is not there. Wintle points out that biographies are usually written after the subject's death, depriving the authors of direct contact, and anyway he felt compelled to "keep some distance, which is a good thing because she's a political victim. So not meeting her was not a problem."
The fact that Suu Kyi lived for a quarter of a century outside Burma - principally in Oxford - nevertheless gave Wintle some entree to those who knew her there. He was in touch with relatives, friends and acquaintances, some of whom had kept her letters.
"She also went to Kyoto in Japan and Simla in India. She worked with the UN for a couple years in New York. She had an awful lot of contact with people outside Burma. And there were the friends of her husband, Michael Aris, as well.
"I kept going back to Chiang Mai and Mae Sot too, to meet her Burmese helpers who are now in exile there. So I had all those contacts. I was very fortunate."
The result is a portrait of a woman in her 60s, isolated from her husband, children and friends, with only a maid to fetch what she needs. Her residence in north Rangoon is a crumbling colonial villa surrounded by an unkempt garden and enclosed by a high wall whose pink paint has faded.
Her father was the father of Burmese independence, her mother an ambassador to India. They gave her a name that means "strange collection of bright victories".
Suu Kyi doesn't remember Aung San well, says Wintle, but does recall him picking her up every day when he came home from work. Her most treasured possession was a doll he brought back from London for her in 1947, following his talks with the British government. After his death, her mother made sure that his children had a moral image of him as an example to follow. Suu Kyi first ambition was to become a soldier.
"Everyone referred to my father as bogyoke, which means 'general'," she wrote, "so I wanted to be a general too because I thought this was the best way to serve one's country, just like my father had done."
Instead, reading Sherlock Holmes steered her elsewhere. She was soon absorbed in the classics of literature, and then keen to see the world. While her mother served as Burma's envoy to India, Suu Kyi learned to ride horses, arrange flowers and play the piano.
In 1964 she went to England to further her studies at Oxford's St Hugh's College, which Wintle calls "a place of contrasts and surprises, as well as everlasting tradition".
"Diminutive and austere, there was something of the elfin prude about her in her late teens and early twenties," he writes. "She could come across as being unusually reserved, remote and judgmental."
Wintle got a glimpse of her at Oxford, when she was out cycling, clad in blue jeans. "She had a striking face, very attractive," he says.
During her second summer at college, Suu Kyi occasionally came back to her residence after curfew, a few drinks in her system, and had to climb the wall to get in. Nor did she fare well in her finals. Robin Christopher, then a friend and now Sir Robin, confides that she had been expected to do much better.
Possibly her literary interest outweighed her talent for economics and political philosophy, but that's what she studied because she felt it would be of greater use to her homeland. The strength that Suu Kyi would display as a champion of liberty, Wintle suggests, could have been an academic liability at the time.
It's unlikely that Oxford alone was responsible solely for her ideology, he says. She was in Burma until age 18, then Delhi, where she "absorbed the Gandhian philosophy of non-violence" and even got to know Indira Gandhi.
Oxford gave Suu Kyi "a broader understanding of liberal democracy and politics", and then came her two years' work at the United Nations, where the ideals of human rights came to the fore.
Finally, "She became a devout Buddhist after she went back to Burma in the 1980s, particularly after she was placed under house arrest ... She took her kids to Rangoon to make sure they were instructed in Buddhism."
Wintle credits Buddhism with helping Suu Kyi maintain her calm in the face of conflict, but points out that this can be a detriment in politics. "She's not a bullying, bruising politician at all," unlike Margaret Thatcher, for example.
There are anti-junta activists who think Suu Kyi can do no wrong, he notes, and others who regard her as a failure - along with the international sanctions levied against Rangoon.
"And the Burmese democratic movement doesn't amount to much at the moment," Wintle says. "It's terribly sad."
"The Perfect Hostage: A Life of Aung San Suu Kyi", published by Hutchin-son/Random, is available at Asia Books and other leading bookstores.