2026 January Newsletter
Welcome to our New Year newsletter, which reports on the Trust’s achievements over the past six months and looks ahead to a busy programme of events in 2026.
We thank all our readers for their enthusiastic support and shall be delighted to have your comments and ideas. Our next newsletter will be in July 2026.
2025 June Newsletter
Welcome to our June newsletter, which we hope will interest and entertain you this summer!
The content updates supporters on Trust activities since our last issue in December, including changes to the Board. We open with an address by our new Chair, Prof Phil Cooke, report on 80th anniversary commemorations of the end of the war in Europe, and tell stories about escapees.
2024 December Newsletter
The content includes an update of Trust activities since our last issue in June and fascinating articles from supporters retracing the steps of family members in wartime Italy. We open with an account of the annual luncheon on November 20th, at which the MSMT “family” was present in force to say an emotional thank-you to Sir Nick Young, who stepped down as chairman on December 31st.
2024 June Newsletter
This package of fascinating stories and updates about the Trust’s work opens with Sir Nick Young’s final report as Chair and a tribute to him for his 20 years of hard work and great success in the role, written by Letitia Blake, our Secretary. We thank Nick, and his wife Helen, for the amazing devotion they have shown to fulfilling the Trust’s mission.
2023 Newsletter
MSMT trustees unveil the new memorial at Eden Camp museum to the brave Italians who saved PoWs. On the left are Letitia Blake, Christopher Woodhead and Sir Nick Young. On the right are Rear-Admiral Angelo Virdis, of the Italian embassy, Signora Nicoletta Virdis, John Simkins and Anne Copley.
2022 Newsletter
As we all emerge from the extraordinary hiatus of the pandemic, we have spent some time looking at the priorities for the Trust over the next five years. Thanks particularly to the generosity of the late Keith Killby, our founder, and the successful fundraising appeal led by Vanni Treves, we are in a strong position financially, with more than £3 million invested for our future work.
2021 Newsletter
WELL – “that was the year that wasn’t,” you might say!
As we emerge into what will, hopefully, soon begin to look like a return to “near normal”, let me first express the hope that all our generous supporters and ex-PoW family members and friends have come through this troubling year more or less
unscathed.
2020 Newsletter
For all of us, 2020 will be remembered as the Year of the Virus, possibly the strangest and most unsettling year in our lifetimes. But of course, few of us have personal memories of the Second World War, when separation, uncertainty, fear, and even the deaths of family, friends or acquaintances were everyday experiences not dissimilar to those of today…
2019 Newsletter
The death of the founder is a big moment in the life of any charity, especially when the founder has played such a big part in the daily life of the organisation – as Keith Killby did until shortly before his death last September at the age of 102. Luckily, we have a very active bunch of trustees, all of whom are keen to see MSMT, which is now entering its 30th year, continue to grow and prosper. So there is no chance of the Trust slowing down. Even so, Keith will be sorely missed by all of us.
2018 Newsletter
Welcome to the 75th anniversary edition of the Newsletter – or, more precisely, the 75th anniversary of the Italian Armistice, when so many of our fathers took the opportunity to escape, before the camps in Italy were overrun
by German forces.
2017 Newsletter
This has been a year of exciting progress and achievement as we continue to implement our five-year strategy of developing the Trust’s activities in various directions. As you will read in this newsletter, we have this year…
2016 Newsletter
Welcome to the 2016 annual report from MSMT – and thank you for your continued support! I’m sure you will be pleased to read on page 4 about the new projects we are working on, and to see that our work of commemoration and celebration goes on as strongly as ever.
2015 Newsletter
Shortly before 5pm on Saturday 2 May, Miles Skinner ran – or, rather, hobbled – into St Peter’s Square in Vatican City. After 263 miles, his left leg was buckling and he had blood blisters almost the size of his toes….
2014 Newsletter
The 70th anniversary of the Italian Armistice and subsequent breakout of Allied PoWs from prison camps all over Italy, could, I feel, hardly have gone better as far as the Monte San Martino Trust is concerned.
2013 Newsletter
As the Italian Armistice was declared, seventy years ago, young men took their first steps to freedom from PoW camps all over Italy. Some were excited, some afraid: all were uncertain about what would happen next. They were setting out on what would be the big adventure of their lives, in a foreign country with which we had been at war…