If it isn't the greatest love story of the 20th century, it is certainly one of the strangest.

She is the one-time housewife who left her young sons behind to try to save a nation from itself.

He is the faithful husband and father, married to a legend who had to accept the painful fact that the world needed her even more than he did.

Somehow we all knew that the marriage of Aung San Suu Kyi and the Oxford don Dr Michael Aris could never have the happy ending that this most remarkable of couples so deserved.

Like Dr Aris, we have lived in fear that his wife's stand against the military rulers of Burma would eventually be met with violence. After the hunger strikes and years of house arrest, the strain on her frail body must have taken a terrible toll. But she has lived to fight on and we now know that her husband is the one battling for his life.

The Oxford don is suffering from prostate cancer, which has spread to his spine and lungs.

His condition has come to the attention of the world as it became known that he is seeking a visa from the Burmese government to visit his wife.

Mischievously, the Burmese government has replied that Suu Kyi "who is in perfect health" should travel to England "to respond to her husband's dying wish to see her".

But Dr Aris knows better than to hope for such a visit. For if his wife were to leave Burma, it is unlikely that she would be allowed to return. No-one can now doubt that he, too, has sacrificed much for Burma. Suu Kyi, the daughter of the murdered Burmese national hero Aung San, came to Oxford in 1964 to study at St Hugh's College. She met Dr Aris, an expert on Tibetan civilisation, in London. Their relationship could hardly have got off to a more romantic start when they went to live in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where Dr Aris became a tutor to the royal family. But they always wanted to make Oxford their family home.

They and their sons Alexander and Kim never felt that the family was living on borrowed time. But Dr Aris said: "She always used to say to me that if her people ever needed her, she would not fail them.

Fate struck in August 1988. She had gone to Burma when her mother suffered a stroke. But news that thousands of demonstrators in Burma had been shot at led to her fateful decision to join the fight for democracy. He continued to immerse himself in his research and to bringing up two boys alone. "It is difficult to conceive sitting here in Oxford what the situation is like over there," the softly spoken academic told me. "Of course, it preoccupies me day and night. We have got on with family life as best we can.

Dr Aris, a fellow of St Antony's College, has not been allowed to visit his wife since 1996. The ban was apparently in retaliation for his carrying out a public statement from his wife. For the last two years he has only been able to speak to her once a week by telephone.

A spokesman for his wife in Burma said she was concerned about her husband's health, adding: "But that does not deter her from going about her party's business. She doesn't lose momentum."

As he lays in a bed at Oxford's Churchill Hospital, Dr Aris wouldn't expect anything else from his wife. We can only pray that the Burmese government might yet surprise him with an act of genuine humanity.

Story date: Friday 19 March

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