Daw Aung San Suu Kyi could well be Asia's best-known political figure - yet at the start she was like a first-time jockey winning the Grand National. Arriving in Myanmar in 1988 at the age of 43, with no experience of practical politics, in two months she came close to overthrowing a military government and then founded a political party, the National League for Democracy, which won the 1990 general election by a landslide.

That true story was as thrilling as you could wish, but it was put on hold in 1990 by her house arrest - in which condition she has remained, with some breaks up until November 2010.

The world's continuing interest in her over the many years since then has been justified by the enormous potential she showed from the outset. Her success in winning the hearts and trust of the Myanmar people and the world back in 1988 had not been a matter of mere chance. From her own earliest days onwards she had clearly been grooming herself for the stern challenge of taking over her father's mantle in Myanmar, should that ever be necessary. This fact makes her 43 years of anonymity before 1988 of consuming interest.

Peter Popham lays out her first four decades in a very readable way. Born in 1945, she got her startling looks and slim figure from her father; then her upright bearing and fierce integrity came from her mother's upbringing. In India, where she went to school while her mother was Myanmar ambassador there, she learned the skills of democratic debate, and she was bowled over by the example of Mahatma Gandhi, who had controlled a vast popular movement by sheer principle, courage and an infinite willingness to sacrifice himself.

Popham recounts how at a later stage Suu Kyi promised to marry Michael Aris, a British academic - only on condition that he would let her go back to her country if it ever needed her. And after that, and giving birth to two sons, she studied her late father's life as an academic subject, learning even more about what had made him a hypnotic leader. She also pursued postgraduate studies at London University - and when in Myanmar, and particularly when she was under detention, she greatly refined her knowledge of Buddhism and meditation, to which she later turned in the solitude of her house arrest.

Popham does full justice to the breakneck years of the political struggle - 1988-1990. He does not spend a lot of space retelling Myanmar's history before that as other writers have done; nor can his book be completely up to date, because this story is still developing fast. But he does tell the heady story of Myanmar's democracy movement in 1988, with more details than some; and of Suu Kyi's campaigning tours before the election in 1990. This is enriched with excerpts from a diary kept by Ma Thanegi - who had been serving as Suu Kyi's assistant as her little group drove from village to village, campaigning round the provinces before the election, and often finding great crowds to receive them. I suppose Suu Kyi was improvising the whole time, because she had never been involved in elections before her trip to Myanmar; nor did the Myanmar public have much knowledge of what to expect.

Some local officials put on pressure to stop her tour, because it was getting local people involved, in a way that must have disturbed them intensely; but she replied with calm words and adroitly side-stepped most of the opposition; and on one occasion famously walked forwards through a line of levelled guns. But Ma Thanegi also records their personal chat and laughter in the car between destinations, how they managed local accommodation in each place and so forth.

Then the long years of detention after the election victory of the National League for Democracy had been disallowed by the regime; detention which Suu Kyi accepted with as much composure as Nelson Mandela, though it meant years of separation from her family in the UK; and her husband died during this time. She continued to speak out for human rights when she could - and, for instance, asked for a tourism boycott of Myanmar by other countries. But she never stopped believing that a reconciliation would be possible with the military regime - and Popham relates that she was taking part in serious discussion through intermediaries with one of the strong men of the regime, General Khin Nyunt - talks which were brought to an end by Khin Nyunt's sudden downfall. Observers tended at the time to be cautious about giving much weight to such talks because of Khin Nyunt's well-known personal antipathy for her; however, the general was himself released from house arrest in January 2012, and described Suu Kyi's recent talks with President Thein Sein and foreign leaders as "good signs" for the future of the country, so that seems to support Popham's account.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi showed from 1988 onwards that she had a great power to move the Myanmar people and be accepted as one of them despite her long absence from her homeland. Predictably, Myanmar's military rulers took her people-power as a threat to themselves - particularly because she had a British husband and never stopped talking of democracy and human rights, which they saw as slogans of the west. Yet people who knew her better could never conceive of her as a stooge of American or British interests; her deep commitment to the Myanmar principles of Buddhism infuses all her speeches; she has always been a fierce Myanmar nationalist and one who refuses to be pushed around.

It would be a great thing, not only for Myanmar but for the world, if a peaceful way forward can be found in Myanmar - to which she certainly has much to contribute. She has all the qualifications for greatness that one could possibly hope for - endorsed by a Nobel Peace Prize. How much of that greatness she is able to achieve is a matter for the future. But at 66 she is still young - and so is Myanmar.

Derek Brooke-Wavell
January 2012