For most Allied prisoners of war, there were no heroic escapes through secret tunnels – the reality was a constant battle against boredom and brutality.
Written when it was still just possible to find men alive who could tell their extraordinary tale, and republished now with a substantial afterword, Midge Gillies’s book casts a new light on a remarkable group of men who held onto the hope that there was life beyond the camps.
So they applied their initiative to forming orchestras, laying out a golf course between their huts and even, on the notorious Burma Railway, saving their fellow men’s lives with improvised surgery.
They attended lectures, learned new languages and, at one German camp, sat so many exams that it became known as ‘the Barbed-Wire University’.
By turns thrilling, funny, desperate and moving, this is a story of men whose years in captivity became one of their most amazing achievements, and changed their lives for ever.
The Barbed-Wire University: The Real Lives of Allied Prisoners of War in the Second World War by Midge Gillies is published in paperback on 9 June, 2025.
There are many more historical books in our list of over 170 published this year.
