Prince Damrong, queried by his brother on the historical reasons
for a monument to Thao Suranari, opined that it was ‘one
more example of how present-day thinking is totally at odds with
that of the past’. The decision to make her a focus of public commemoration
through the erection of a statue at the gate of Khorat’s
reconstructed city walls, unveiled in January 1935, has been