Tim Hatton TOCK TOCK BIRDS First Edition Signed
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Tim Hatton TOCK TOCK BIRDS First Edition Signed
First edition, first print hardback of TOCK TOCK BIRDS: A Spider in the Web of International Terrorism, by Tim Hatton OBE. Published by The Book Guild Ltd., Sussex, 2004. Signed, inscribed and dated by Hatton on the title page. Foreword by Vice Admiral Sir James Weatherall KCVO, OBE.
The book is in very good condition (Clean black cloth boards with gilt lettering on the spine) with only minor wear to the pictorial dust jacket, which is not price clipped (light creasing to the edges). Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no other inscriptions.
Despite a naval background, Tim Hatton volunteered for the army at the age of seventeen, and was commissioned into the 9th Gurkha Rifles, with whom he served in Malaya, Indonesia, Thailand and India during Partition. He was a member of the Malayan Police Service from 1948 to 1967, serving throughout the two Malayan Emergencies, and retiring as Acting Director of the Malaysian Special Branch.
He was awarded the Colonial Police Medal and the OBE. On returning to the UK he became a principal in the Development Commission. Since 1982 he has been heavily involved in education, as Clerk to the Governors of the Haberdasher's Aske Schools and Director of the United Westminster Schools Foundation.
"Tock Tock Birds is a memoir that chronicles some of the most fascinating - as well as some of the least known - periods in post-war history. With a focus on India and Southeast Asia, Tock Tock Birds takes the reader through the end of European colonialism to the earliest days of the new nation states.
Much of what Tim Hatton experienced then, and remembers today (based on his daily diary and correspondence to his family back home), has startling relevance for contemporary audiences.
Firstly as a young officer with the 9th Gurkha Rifles, then as a high-ranking official in the Colonial Police Service in Malaya and subsequently, as the Director of the Malaysian Intelligence Service. Tim Hatton was ideally place to witness, and take part in, some of the most dramatic and colourful events of the last days of Empire.
At the age of 22 he commanded a company of Gurkhas which escorted a caravan of 100,000 non-militant Muslims, with all their animals and possessions, travelling on foot and in strict purdah from India to Pakistan during the aftermath of India's Partition.
Hatton's role in Malaya began when he discovered secret Malayan Communist Party training camps on the Thai-Malayan border, and in central Malaya, well before the British Government's delayed declaration of the Emergency in 1948.
He was often at the sharp end of the Communist Emergency: on one occasion the head of a senior Communist Regimental Commander was dumped on the table of his 'safe house' on the jungle edge.
As well as offering personal insight into the growth of indiscriminate terrorism and the politics of post-war Asia, and including first-hand portraits of major figures of 20th century history such as Queen Mary, Clement Attlee, Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, Tunku Abdul Rahman Prime Minister of Malasia, and King Constantine of the Hellenes - Tock Tock Birds is a sensitive (and often amusing) evocation of disappearing local cultures, and thriving wildlife, in the days before tiger economies, globalisation and terrorism changed Southeast Asia for ever."
366 pages with appendices and an index. Illustrated with black & white photographs.
ISBN: 1 85776 851 5
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Tim Hatton TOCK TOCK BIRDS First Edition Signed