The Great Escaper: The Life and Death of Roger Bushell, by Simon Pearson is published in hardback by Hodder and Stoughton, priced £20 (ebook £10.99). Available August 15.
Enthralling - that is the word which instantly leaps to mind in considering this marvellous story of RAF pilot Roger Bushell who emerges as one of the great - if unsung - heroes and leaders of World War II.
Bushell, a South African with a great love for Britain, spent most of the war as a prisoner-of-war after being shot down during a Spitfire mission.
Much of the time was spent organising and implementing elaborate and, quite frankly, amazing escape plans. He inspired incredible devotion from his fellow captives and his disruptive activities in the various camps in which he was held were clearly instrumental in hampering the German war effort, and more than once threw Hitler himself into a black rage.
Some of the escape plans, carried out right under the noses of their German captors, make astonishing reading.
Bushell himself escaped three times - more than once tantalisingly close to freedom before being recaptured. On the last occasion he was shot, against all the rules of the Geneva Agreement, and his murderer subsequently executed.
But he was also a flawed character, diverted occasionally by the womenfolk in his life. His relationship with a Czech girl when he was holed up in Prague gave him the opportunity to witness the unspeakable cruelties of the Nazis. It makes chilling reading.
He was recommended for posthumous decorations after the war, but was accorded only a Mention in Despatches. The author, Fleet Street journalist Simon Pearson, wrote: "The British Government seemed remarkably reluctant to acknowledge what he had achieved."
Pearson is to be congratulated on a his prodigious and scrupulous research to bring to life a hard-to-put-down narrative of a vital aspect of World War II, which had hitherto not been given the credit it deserved.
9/10
(Review by Chris Moncrieff)
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