Leon Comber

In 1991, he moved to Melbourne, Australia, with his second wife, Takako Kawai, and their daughter. Subsequently, he became an Honorary Research Fellow at Monash Asia Institute, Monash University. At the age of 76, he was awarded a Ph.D. in Asian Studies.

Comber was involved with the Asiaweek Short Story Competition, which was run annually between 1981 and 1988. He edited and wrote an introduction for Prizewinning Asian Fiction, an anthology of prizewinning short stories from the competition. Throughout this period, he also wrote and edited a large number of books and articles, including several about Malayan policing and intelligence.

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. In 1966 he founded Heinemann Education's Writing in Asia Series. 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.

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.

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).

Leonard Francis Comber (born 20 September 1921) is 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 in September 1921. 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.