Mary Thida Lun The first in a series that invites close, unhurried listening to the stories of individuals.

Mary is a civil servant, Oxford-educated and courting a cavalry officer. So far, perhaps so typical of a fortunate young English woman. But within her family Mary is known as Thida, the daughter of parents who fled Cambodia in the early 1980's. In her life and work - at home in Fulham, or when posted to the Sudan and Iraq with the Department for International Development - she can rarely escape the spectre of Pol Pot's 'killing fields'.