The Barbed-Wire University

Author appearing on the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are? with Will Young on 6 June 2025.

An acclaimed history of what Allied POWs during the last war really spent their time doing: educating themselves, whether that be taking degrees, learning to play in an orchestra, perfecting surgical techniques with rudimentary implements, or excelling at sport, art or drama. Now reissued with an extensive Afterword.

According to popular myth, Allied prisoners of war during the Second World War spent most of their time escaping. In fact, from Germany to the Far East, they were doing much more remarkable things.

Faced with the prospect of years of boredom, these servicemen took up the crafts and professions they'd pursued before their captivity - or set about learning new ones. They formed orchestras (asking the Red Cross to send kettle drums), sat accountancy exams (textbooks, please), dressed up in drag and put on operas. They contested Ashes series, laid out golf courses in the exercise yard. When they needed medical care, their own surgeons perfected camp dentistry, fashioned prosthetic limbs. Actors like Clive Dunn and Donald Pleasance, cartoonists like Ronald Searle, artists like Terry Frost - all developed, or even first plied, their crafts while POWs.

Little wonder that one camp in Germany became known as 'the Barbed-Wire University' . . .

Acclaimed on first publication, this superb book is now reissued with an extensive Afterword.