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patient, nonviolent activism. She embodies what thepeople of Myanmar call awza a – charisma and powerfulmoral authority.Family & InfluencesAung San Suu Kyi was born just two years before the assassinationin July 1947 of her father, Aung San, leaderof the Burma Independence Army and the key architectof the country’s independence. Aung San had met SuuKyi’s mother, Ma Khin Kyi, a nurse, while recuperatingfrom malaria in Rangoon General Hospital in 1942.Her father’s premature death was not the only familytragedy: in 1953 Suu Kyi’s elder brother Lin drownedaccidentally at the age of eight (there was also an eldersister Chit, but she had died when only a few days oldin 1946, a year before Suu Kyi’s birth). Later, Suu Kyiwould become estranged from her eldest brother AungSan Oo, an engineer who emigrated to the US; in 2001he unsuccessfully tried to sue her for a share of theirmother’s home – 54 University Ave, Yangon, where SuuKyi has spent the many years of her house arrest.Her parents’ political activism and example of publicservice had an enormous influence on Suu Kyi. ‘When Ihonour my father, I honour all those who stand for thepolitical integrity of Burma’, she writes in the dedicationto her book Freedom from Fear. In the essay MyFather, she says he was ‘a man who put the interests ofthe country before his own needs’ – something Suu Kyihas also done.Suu Kyi’s mother was also a prominent public figurein newly independent Burma, heading up social planningand policy bodies, and briefly acting as an MP,before being appointed the country’s ambassador toIndia in 1960. Suu Kyi finished her schooling in NewDehli, then moved to the UK in 1964 to study at OxfordUniversity. It was in London at the home of Lord GoreBooth, a former ambassador to Burma, and his wifethat Suu Kyi met history student Michael Aris.Beautiful Love StoryLuc Bresson, director of the biopic The Lady, callsSuu Kyi and Aris’s courtship and marriage ‘probablythe most beautiful love story I’ve heard since Romeoand Juliet.’ When Aris went to Bhutan in the late ’60sto work as a tutor to the royal family and continue hisresearch, Suu Kyi was in New York, working at the UN;they corresponded by post. After their marriage on 1January 1972 in London, Suu Kyi joined him Bhutan.Five years later they were back in Oxford, Aris teachingat the university, Suu Kyi a mother to two boys – Alexanderand Kim.From that period, her friend Anna Pasternak Slaterremembers, in the essay she contributes to Freedomfrom Fear, the future leader of Burma’s democracymovement as a thrifty housewife, ‘laboriously pedallingback from town, laden down with sagging plastic bagsand panniers heavy with cheap fruit and vegetables’ or‘running up elegant cut-price clothes’ on her sewingAUNG SAN SUUKYI TIMELINE19 June 1945A baby girl is born in Yangon andnamed after her father (AungSan), paternal grandmother(Suu) and mother (Khin Kyi); thename means ‘a bright collectionof strange victories’.1960Daw Khin Kyi is appointedBurma’s ambassador to India.Suu Kyi accompanies hermother to New Delhi, whereshe continues her schooling.1964Moves to the UK to study atOxford University. Meets futurehusband, Tibetan scholarMichael Aris, at London homeof her ‘British parents’ LordGore Booth and his wife.1967Graduates with a third-classdegree in politics, philosophyand economics. Daw Khin Kyiretires to Yangon.1969–71Moves to New York forpostgraduate studies, but endsup working for the UN alongsidefamily friend and ‘emergencyaunt’ Ma Than E and Secretary-General U Thant.1972Marries Aris and joins him inBhutan, where he is tutoringthe royal family. Suu works asresearch offi cer in Bhutan’sRoyal Ministry of ForeignAff airs.1973–77The couple return to the UKfor the birth of their firstson, Alexander. They take upresidence in Oxford, wheretheir second son, Kim, is bornin 1977.353AUNG SAN SUU KYI