TO people in North Oxford Aung San Suu Kyi was a kind and friendly neighbour, the petite academic’s wife that they would remember cycling back from town balancing bags of shopping.

There was always something calming about the slightly exotic mother of two, who moved into 15 Park Town – someone to turn to with a problem or domestic crisis.

But few who knew Ms Suu Kyi back in the 1980s could have guessed that one day an entire nation would depend on her, with her quiet determination captivating millions around the globe.

It would take just one telephone call to change the course of her life – leading her to leave her home and children in Oxford, never to return.

To dedicate herself to the people of Burma, she would sacrifice the joy of seeing her boys growing up and being with her husband, the Oxford University don Dr Michael Aris, who died of cancer in 1999 on his 53rd birthday.

With his wife placed under house arrest in 1989, Dr Aris was to see her only five times, the last time at Christmas in 1995.

When I interviewed Dr Aris at the family home 20 years ago, on a white chest of drawers sat the Nobel Peace Prize awarded in 1991, which she was finally able to collect last weekend.

He recalled the transformation of his wife from a devoted mother in suburban Oxford into the mother of a nation.

Dr Aris said: “It was a quiet evening in Oxford like many others in March 1988. Our sons were already in bed and we were reading when the telephone rang.”

Ms Suu Kyi picked up the phone to learn her mother had suffered a stroke and was in Rangoon General Hospital. The next day his wife took a bus to the town centre walked briskly to the station and headed for Heathrow.

“I had a premonition that our lives would change forever,” Dr Aris told me. Not long after his wife landed in Burma, the political situation ignited and she would shoot to the leadership of the struggle for democracy.

But she had always been more than the caring mum, known for her brilliant children’s parties.

Born in Rangoon , Ms Suu Kyi was the daughter of Burma’s national hero Aung San, who was assassinated when she was two.

She first came to Oxford in 1964 to read politics, philosophy and economics at St Hugh’s College. Her teachers in Oxford included the celebrated Oxford philosopher, Mary Warnock, who recalled: “She was unlike any undergraduate I had taught before or have since.

“She was totally untouched by the sexual aspirations of her friends, naive in a way, but sure-footed and direct in all her dealings. She was also extraordinarily easily amused and found many things hilarious.”

She met her husband, an expert on Tibetan civilization, in London. The couple briefly lived in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan before deciding to make Oxford their family home.

Although she had no political ambitions – and appeared happy to devote hers energies to bringing up her sons Alexander and Kim (born in 1973 and 1977) – she became increasingly fascinated with the father she never knew.

Her husband recalled: “She always used to say to me that if her people ever needed her, she would not fail them. Like Suu, I had imagined that if a day of reckoning were to come, it would happen later in life when our children were grown up. But fate and history never seem to work in orderly ways.”

While nursing her sick mother, on hearing reports that thousands of demonstrators were being shot at, she took the historic decision that she could not remain a bystander.

Dr Aris said: “You know I read a letter she sent me before we married. She reminded me that one day she would have to return to Burma and she would count on my support at that time, not as her due, but as a favour.”

Timothy Garton Ash, Oxford University Professor of European Studies, spoke to Ms Suu Kyi by video link as 15 years of house arrest came to an end.

He said: “ Like Nelson Mandela, she has endured decades of imprisonment, emerging with an extraordinary lack of rancour.” And he believes she will one day follow Mandela on the path “from prisoner to president” , while recognising major obstacles ahead.

But for now there is her long awaited return to her beloved Oxford on her 67th birthday, which she recognised may be a bittersweet experience. “I am looking forward to it, very simply,” she said. “I want to see old friends again and to rediscover old places where I have been happy. I hope it will not be tinged with sadness.”