Category: Books
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Focus on the ordinary soldier
Copies of Anne Copley’s new book, The Girl with a Peach: Courage and Compassion in Wartime Italy, are flying off the shelves.
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Book review: Non Chiusero Le Porte by Pierluigi Felli (They did not shut their doors)
The best way to build a picture of the PoWs’ life on the run is to drill down into a specific location. This is what historian Pierluigi Felli has done in a meticulously researched study of a municipality in the province of Rieti, in the region of Lazio, reports John Simkins.
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Escape from Fontanellato
Professor Robert Tregay’s introductory words to article regarding Eric Newby and Love and War in the Apennines. January 2023 Recovering from an operation six years ago, I was given Eric Newby’s book, Love and War in the Apennines, to read. “It’s my favourite novel,” my friend said, and it became for me the book which…
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A People’s Courage
The Monte San Martino Trust has published a translation into English of first-hand accounts by Italian contadini who hid escaped Allied prisoners of war in the central eastern region of Le Marche. The English title is A People’s Courage, Civil resistance in German-occupied Italy. It is available from Amazon in Softback and also Amazon to…
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Italian book on PoW camps
The book “Prigionieri in Italia” curated by historian Marco Minardi provides new insights into the Allied presence in Italy during WWII, focusing on PoW camps. The volume, featuring leading Italian experts, covers various aspects, from organization and infringements of the Geneva Convention to the help given by local farmers. It sheds light on lesser-known camps,…
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Bugle call to freedom
(An account of this project was carried in an article in La Gazzetta di Parma on 7 September. Gazzetta di Parma On 9 September the Monte San Martino Trust published the first version in English that tells the story of the mass escape of prisoners of war from a camp at Fontanellato, Italy, from the…
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A long walk home
One of the most readable – and poignant – accounts of an escape in wartime Italy has been republished, restoring one of the main actors to his rightful place. The Long Walk Home, which had been out of print since a 1952 edition, tells the story of the escape of two young officers from German…
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A woman as a witness
The memoirs of Lucy de Burgh have now been published, providing a delightful and fascinating account of wartime Italy and its aftermath. In My Italian Adventures: An English Girl at War 1943-47, Mrs de Burgh (then Lucy Addey) describes her recruitment as ATS Officer, Military Intelligence, and posting to Italy, and her subsequent work for…