The book, however, had its tragic consequences as it was not until it appeared in print that Morrison’s wife, who had remained behind in Singapore while her husband was in Hong Kong covering the Korean War, was greatly distressed when she came to know about his affair, and steps were taken to have the book withdrawn from circulation.  However, the publishers said that it would not be possible to do so as the book had already been widely circulated in the book trade and the film rights sold. Unusually for a novel, it had a long Foreword contributed by Malcolm MacDonald, then the British Commissioner General for South East Asia, living in Bukit Serene, Johore Bahru, one of the Sultan of Johore’s palaces, not far from where we lived,  although I do not think he knew of the consequences brought about by the publishing of the novel.

To revert to the writing of And The Rain My Drink, most of the background information used for it was provided from information that the author had picked up in casual social conversations with police and SB officers in Johore Bahru, although they were not aware she was writing a novel or that it would be used in this way. Many of the characters that appeared in it, too, could be identified without too much trouble with actual persons who were ‘fictionalized’ in the story although their real names were not used but as many of them were given traits which they did not have, they were not very happy about it.

When the book, which was considered to be critical in many ways of the British colonial government in Malaya, especially the hardships caused by the large-scale resettlement programme into New Villages that had been carried out by the colonial authorities during the Malayan Emergency to separate the Chinese squatters and farmers  from the communist terrorists, came to the attention of General Templer, who was then the High Commissioner and Director of Operations in Malaya, he took up the matter with the Colonial Office on one of his visits to London in 1953 in an attempt to have the book suppressed on account of its anti-British bias.  However, he was not successful in having the book withdrawn although a senior Colonial Office mandarin promised to see what could be done to provide a more balanced picture of the circumstances by sending out Vernon Bartlett, a MP and a journalist of the London News Chronicle, to Singapore to provide a more favourable account of the situation.