The book launch took the form of a discussion between Tom Carver, a former soldier and later a BBC war and foreign correspondent who now lives in Washington, and the historian Roger Moorhouse, a specialist in German history and the author of Killing Hitler. At the end of the session, Tom kindly paid tribute to the work done by the Monte San Martino Trust and signed copies of his book.

Where the hell have you been? is published by Short Books, 3A Exmouth House, Pine St, EC1R OJH and costs £16.99.

The following is an edited version of the discussion between Tom Carver (TC) and Roger Moorhouse (RM)

TC: Because I had had war experience myself I wanted to find out what my father Richard had been through. He did not like to talk about it but he had an extraordinary war. He always felt in the shadow of his father, [Field Marshal Bernard] Montgomery, which contributed to his reticence. My book is about him and Monty, about my relationship with my father, and also a testament to his generation.

RM: Did you have access to papers?

TC: I felt I could not write while Richard was alive. I found his war diary when he was dying. In 2006, when he was 93, I was staying with him when over from my home in Washington. I found a notebook, with tiny writing, which was a diary of his time on the run through Italy {from Fontanellato PoW camp, near Parma in north Italy). I also found the compass he made in the camp by magnetising a safety pin, placing it on a coat button and putting it on a needle. He used that on his 500-mile walk down Italy, together with a parachutist's map he found in some woods. The compass still works.

RM: What was your own relationship with Monty like?

TC: I was 15 when Monty died. He was incapable of any modulation below the imperative. I remember he was unbelievably determined. [Tom explained that, as the youngest of a large family, he used to be taken out of his prep school to visit his stepgrandfather, who was then living in Hampshire. He was coached by his father to say that he wanted to join the army when he grew up. Tom related a particular incident when, aged 10, and given the job of handing round chocolates to a lunch party of retired generals, he spilt them on the floor. Searching for them under the table among highly polished shoes, Tom was told peremptorily by Monty to go out and play in the garden.]

[Tom then explained how his father Richard came to be Monty's stepson.]

 My grandfather died at Gallipoli and my grandmother Betty met Monty on a skiing holiday - he was a slightly eccentric colonel at that time. They were married for 10 years. She was an artist, a complete opposite to Monty. She died in Devon in 1937 after she was bitten by an insect on a beach in Devon and got blood poisoning. This happened when Monty was focused on training his troops for war. He was devastated. After hat he lived for the army, he never looked at another woman. If Betty had lived would he have been the great general that he became?

RM: How was Richard  captured?

TC: My father was a liaison officer for Monty. Two days after El Alamein [November 1942, the battle that inflicted the first serious defeat on the Third Reich], Monty, who was in hot pursuit of Rome, told Richard to take a staff car 60 miles forward to find a new HQ. He found one, returned and was going forward again when he ran into some Germans. They never realised he was Monty's stepson or he would have been held hostage and sent to Colditz. He was given over to Italians and ended up in Fontanellato.

 [After the Armistice in September 1943 Richard was among the 600 prisoners at Fontanellato who escaped when the camp commandant opened the gates. Some aimed for Switzerland, some stayed in the area, while many including Richard struck out south to rejoin the Allies who were fighting their way up Italy.]

Richard crossed the River Sangro in mid-December 1943 and walked into Monty's camp, to be greeted with "Where the hell have you been?" But Monty was delighted to see him.

RM: Why do you think so many Italians helped PoWs, at great risk to themselves from the Germans and Fascists?

TC: It was the sense of helping a man in need. [This explanation was supported by comments from listeners in the audience, who said that most Italians had never been in favour of the war, and that the families hoped that their own sons would receive similar aid on other battlefronts.]

RM: Did you really only discover your father after his death?

TC: He suffered from survivor's guilt. He was a very good father who had another career as a teacher. But once he showed me Fontanellato camp and the ditch where 600 men hid after escaping from the camp. The book title is also directed at him. I did not know him till the end.

Pictured below, at the Victory Services Club, from left: Lady Helen Young (wife of the chairman of the Monte San Martino Trust), Tom Carver and Keith Killby (Trust's founder)