The bestselling historian with the real story of WW2's "inescapable" Nazi prisonIn a forbidding Gothic castle on a hilltop in the heart of Nazi Germany, an unlikely band of British officers spent the Second World War plotting daring escapes from their German captors. There were bars on every window, precipices on almost every side, several layers of sentries, floodlights and barbed wire, and a moat around the outside. Imagining it to be escape-proof, the Wehrmacht selected it to host officer prisoners of war (POWs) in 1939.

Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy. With rare exceptions such as bank holidays, the book group meets on the first Wednesday of every month at 7. The most important German character in the book is Reinhold Eggers, the senior security officer and the longest serving member of the garrison. Much of this was because the planning of escapes and generally trying to outwit and annoy the German guards was one of the best ways of keeping occupied and amused.

Having sworn allegiance to the British Crown when joining the RAMC Mazumdar refused to break his oath and escape his imprisonment by changing sides despite every inducement offered him by Bose and the Nazis. With access to an astonishing range of material, Macintyre reveals a remarkable cast of characters of multiple nationalities hitherto hidden from history, with captors and prisoners living for years cheek-by-jowl in a thrilling game of cat and mouse. With renovations largely completed, the castle now includes both a museum and guided tours showing some of the escape tunnels built by prisoners of the Oflag during the war. Biography: Ben Macintyre is the multimillion-copy bestselling author of books including Colditz, Agent Sonya, SAS: Rogue Heroes, The Spy and the Traitor, Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat and A Spy Among Friends.

K.) and the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, and Rogue Heroes, among other books. The other is The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland, an award-winning journalist and bestselling novelist whose book shows off his talents as both an information-gatherer and a storyteller. The latter were prisoners regarded as of particular value by the Germans because of their family connections. What forces of psychology, politics, class, race, sexuality and mental illness were at play there, between the prisoners themselves and between the incarcerated and incarcerators? Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you.Set aside a few hours for this book, since once you start reading, you will not stop until the last page. The title to be read and discussed is sign-posted and on sale for the whole of the previous month (with a discount for those who make it known they intend to come) and everybody is welcome, whether first-timer, part-timer or regular-timer. Notice to Internet Explorer users Server security: Please note Internet Explorer users with versions 9 and 10 now need to enable TLS 1.

In short, Macintyre illustrates how the manifold strengths and weaknesses of humanity were present in the dour, claustrophobic, Disneyesque castle that was Colditz.Furthermore, if those who decide the allocations of the real and unreal are cruel, mad or colossally wrong, what then? THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER’A master at setting the pulse racing’ Daily Mail’A fine feat of storytelling . Many of these have hitherto been excluded from history, because they did not fit the traditional mould of the while, male Allied officer, dedicated to escaping,” he states.