Rediscover the incredible life and career of the man who saved the world from nuclear war in 1962 when he negotiated an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. U Thant was the longest-serving Secretary-General of the United Nations (1961–71) and held almost celebrity status during a golden age of diplomacy. Now his grandson Thant Myint-U, an award-winning writer and historian who himself served with the UN, takes a fascinating and hugely entertaining look at U Thant’s life. Talking to the BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet about his biography Peacemaker, he traces his grandfather’s rise from schoolteacher in a small Burmese backwater in 1947 to the centre of global politics just two decades later.
