Nearly 200 people attended a MSMT zoominar on 12 May 2021 to celebrate Eric Newby’s classic story Love and War in the Apennines.
The Covid pandemic had prompted the Trust to hold its first Zoominar in the autumn of 2020 in order to launch its new book, Bugle Call to Freedom, a translation of Marco Minardi’s L’Orizzonte del Campo, which tells the story of the mass escape from Fontanellato PoW camp. For its second Zoominar, the Trust returned to the subject of Fontanellato, from which Newby himself escaped.
The occasion marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Love and War and presented research by Professor Robert Tregay into the exact route that Newby took and the people he described in his partly fictionalised account. One of those Newby encountered was Wanda Skof, whom he was to marry after the war. Their daughter, Sonia Ashmore also took part in the presentation.
The event raised £1,000 in donations to the Trust.
A recording of the seminar can be accessed at https://youtu.be/RbOxwos27WE
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