An official of the Japanese Embassy in 1988 asked Russell Savage had he ever visited Japan. "Oh, yes," said R.S., "in 1944-45." "You must have been a member of a delegation?" "Oh, no, I was a guest of the Emperor!" "You mean you stayed at the Palace?" "No, I was a prisoner of war..." This biography is a factual, deeply moving, but highly readable account of the experiences of a youthful gunner during his A.I.F. years, chiefly of the time spent by him, following the fall of Singapore, as a prisoner of war. The stark record of these years in A Guest of the Emperor—and Savage spent some time incarcerated on Honshu, Japan's main island—holds the reader's attention throughout, and makes one wonder whether Japan will one day face up to and acknowledge the inexcusable barbarity of the behaviour of its soldiers and, at the very least, apologise.