Book description
On 6 April 1943, Ian Reid, an officer in the Black Watch, was wounded
and captured in Tunisia and sent off to an Italian prisoner-of-war
camp. Five months later, when the Germans took over the camp as the
Italians pulled out of the war, he escaped. So began a life-or-death
game of hide and seek in the heart of the beautiful Italian
countryside, living in barns, sleeping in ditches and desperate
scavenging for food. He was recaptured - though heroically he was to
escape from the Germans a total of five times.
Nearly sixty years later, Howard Reid quite literally followed in
his father's footsteps and made the same journey across Italy - though
in a rather more relaxed fashion. Starting near Modena, he travelled
to Florence and through Chianti, Siena and Orvieto to Rome and beyond,
painting an intimate portrait of his extraordinary father and getting
closer to the truth of his amazing escapades, which were the subject
of a bestselling book in the 1950s.
Along the way, as we are shown the real, modern Italy, Howard mused
on father-son relationships, and the deep but invisible scars left by
two world wars on each of our personal histories. This poignant and
engrossing book is a must for everyone who has ever asked (or wanted,
too late, to ask) the question 'What did you do in the war, Dad?'
Howard Reid is an award-winning film-maker, anthropologist and
writer. Before completing his Ph. D. he lived for two years with
hunter-gatherers in the Amazon basin, and as a film-maker he has spent
several months with the Tuareg people of north Africa as well as
undertaking many other assignments around the world. His previous books
are In Search of the Immortals, about mummy cultures around the world,
and Arthur the Dragon King, which traced the roots of the King Arthur
legend back to the nomadic warrior peoples of central Asia.
