The Man Behind the Bridge: Colonel Toosey and the River Kwai

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey was the senior British officer concerned with the building of the notorious "Bridge over the River Kwai". This responsible and dangerous position forced him to make many critical decisions, but his dilemma was not that presented by Pierre Boulle in his fictional work. The present work is designed to provide an accurate historical account of the terrible events during which more than 16,000 POWs died while building the Thai-Burma railway, of which "the bridge" formed an essential part. A memorial to Toosey, this book is also a definitive history of the building of the railway in the context of the Far Eastern theatre of World War 2.

The author's other publications include "The Japanese Shipping and Shipbuilding Industries:

A History of their Modern Growth" with Professor Tomohei Chida (1990), and "Fyffes and the Banana: