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Published on August 27, 2007

'I try to do my job. Please do yours," His Majesty the King told American reporters during his official visit to the United States in 1960, as reported in the Washington Post.

Thailand's monarch said that kings and the press had the same job to do. They must try to bring the peoples of the world closer together and must make things better in the world.

Memorable and quotable sayings from the King can be found in abundance in the just-released book "The King of Thailand in World Focus", published by the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT).

The 260-page hard-back book, which took three years to complete, is packed with articles from a global perspective about the King and rare photographs taken over six decades. There are 167 wire-service, newspaper and magazine stories from 56 different media organisations. The articles range from short news pieces to analyses and features published from 1946 to 2006.

Credit must be given to the FCCT and its editorial team in bringing together such a remarkable book that reveals the true King. Denis Gray, the book's editor-in-chief, writes perceptively that it was not the intention to paint a particular portrait of the King but rather to faithfully render the varied output of professional journalists. He stresses there was no attempt to salve what to some may appear cliches or cultural insensitivities in a few articles. "How journalists wrote in a particular period is, for better or worse, also a relevant part of this book," he says.

The book also contains rare photos culled from libraries and archives around the world, especially those pertaining to the King's numerous foreign trips as reported and photographed by foreign press and wire services.

Photographs of his trip to the US are impressive. One spread has great pictures of him addressing the US Congress with US President Richard Nixon listening attentively behind. Another one was taken during a reception with a tickertape parade through downtown Manhattan in New York.

The book has nine chapters covering the whole gamut of the King's life, including his youth (1927-1950), coronation year (1950), formative decades (1951-1974), trips abroad during the 1960s and 1970s, and his innovation and working philosophy related to sufficiency and tradition.

The book contains virtually all the formal interviews the King granted to the foreign press. In May 1989, as reported by the New York Times, the King discussed how history would remember him.

"If they want to write about me in a good way, they should write how I do things that are useful. If they want to criticise me, I don't care. I don't mind. But they must criticise me fairly. Usually the criticism is not fair. Or the praise, even the praise sometimes is not fair."

In a chapter entitled Years of Turbulence, the book puts together 24 articles which examine the King's role in Thailand's political development from 1972 to 2006.

Gray reiterates in the book's introduction that most of the foreign reports and analyses were done by the American media and journalists, who "have proved prolific chroniclers of the King - appreciably more so than Europeans or Thailand's own Asian neighbours".

The book also contains writings from countries such as Germany, France, Italy, India, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand , Norway, China, Philippines, Sweden, Nepal, Britain, the former Yugoslavia and Singapore.

Gray says the book is intended as a meaningful record of the man and his times rather than merely a laudatory exercise. "If the thrust of the book is positive, that is the reflection of the bulk of journalistic coverage about him," he wrote. "The fact is that King Bhumibol has consistently enjoyed the kind of press most world leaders can only command in their daydreams."