My friend and former teacher Anna Allott, who has died aged 93, was a lecturer in Burmese at Soas University of London from the early 1950s until her retirement in the early 90s.
Aside from her academic work she was a great promoter of friendship between the UK and Myanmar (Burma), and did much to try to raise awareness in Britain of the country’s literature. Appointed OBE in 1998, she was secretary of the Britain-Burma Society from 1980 to 1997, and from 2002 to 2016 was a trustee of Prospect Burma, a charity set up with funds from her friend Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel peace prize to provide scholarships for Burmese students.
