Leon Comber

Leon (Leonard Francis) Comber was a British military and police officer, and later book publisher, operating in British India, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. He was also an editor and author of books relating to South-East Asia.

Comber, an only child, was born in London. His mother was married to a master bookbinder and typesetter. He was reading law at King's College, London, in 1939 when the Second World War began.

During World War Two, Comber served as a British officer in the Indian Army and took part in military operations in Assam and Burma. At the end of the war, he was among those who landed at Morib Beach, Selangor, on the west coast of Malaya, and witnessed the surrender of Japanese forces in Kelantan.

Following service with the British Military Administration of Malaya (BMA), he was appointed to the British Colonial Service (Malayan Police) when the army handed over administration of the country to the civilian government in April 1946. Leon Comber, a Chinese speaker, spent most of his police service with the Special Branch, the organisation responsible for political, security and operational intelligence. Special Branch participated in the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960), when counter-insurgency operations were launched against the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and its guerrilla force, the MNLA (Malayan National Liberation Army).

Comber left Special Branch after his wife, author Han Suyin, whom he married in 1952, wrote a novel, And the Rain My Drink (1956), which was viewed as being anti-British in its depiction of the guerrilla war of Chinese rubber workers against the government. They divorced in 1958.

Comber then worked for more than twenty years in book publishing. First based in Singapore, later in Hong Kong, he was the regional representative of Heinemann Educational Books of London. He became managing director of local Heinemann subsidiary companies established in Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Subsequently, he was Publisher and Director of Hong Kong University Press.

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