Maurice Collis

Maurice Collis was born in 1889, the son of an Irish solicitor. He entered the Indian Civil Service in 1911 and was posted to Burma, rising to the position of district magistrate in Rangoon in 1929, where the independence of his judgments displeased his superiors who moved him to the position of Excise Commissioner. He returned to England in 1934. He wrote over twenty books, including volumes of autobiography, travel writing, novels, histories and three plays. He died in 1973.

Books by Maurice Collis

Trials in Burma

Maurice Collis

'This is an unpretentious book, but it brings out with unusual clearness the dilemma that faces every official in an empire like our own.' George Orwell

Trials in Burma recounts ...

Siamese White

Maurice Collis

Foremost among the biographies that Maurice Collis wrote during his wide-ranging literary career is Siamese White - an account of the career of Samuel White of Bath who, during the reign ...

Foreign Mud

Maurice Collis

Foreign Mud is one of the most distinguished of Maurice Collis' works of history. This account of the struggle between the British and Chinese in the Opium War in Canton ...