The Dalai Lama: a Tibetan David who stood up to the Chinese Goliath

Author Alexander Norman gives an illuminating account of the Dalai Lama, from his selection as an infant through to his exile and his 21st century persona as a benign all-smiling Buddhist version of the Pope Biography The Dalai Lama Alexander Norman Rider, hardback, 464 pages, €33.59

Dalai Lama (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File)

Kim Bielenberg

For most of his adult life, the Dalai Lama has been the leader in exile of a vast mountainous territory under the yoke of communist China. Almost as soon as he took power in Tibet as a spiritual and political leader, his authority was being stripped away from him - and within a decade he had fled to India.

Over the decades, the Dalai Lama, now 84, could only read with horror about what happened in his homeland under Communist rule. Monasteries were destroyed, monks were killed and religious freedom obliterated by the occupying power.