“The book which triggered one of the most thrilling adventures in detection of my life.”

Following my re-reading of Eric Newby’s book entitled “Love and War in the Apennines” I was reminded about a wonderful opportunity I was given as I was recovering from an operation I underwent in December 2020 to listen in on a Zoom meeting held by the Monte San Martino Trust on 16th May 2021 to commemorate the 50-year Anniversary of the book.

Professor Robert Tregay follows Eric Newby’s travels through Italy

The travel writer Eric Newby’s memoir Love and War in the Apennines was first published in 1971 and has been in print ever since. The book tells the dramatic story of Newby’s capture in Sicily in 1942, while on a commando raid, his time as a prisoner of war in Italy and on the run in the autumn of 1943 after the Italian armistice. He wrote the book as a tribute to the Italian people who risked their lives to assist him. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the book’s first publication, Nick Young, chair of the Monte San Martino Trust, a charity founded by former British prisoners of war in Italy, hosted a discussion with Eric Newby’s daughter, Sonia Ashmore, and Professor Robert Tregay, who has researched the people and locations Newby describes.

The extraordinary thing I now realise with hindsight is that the opening words by Professor Robert Tregay in introducing his own book describing Eric Newby’s ‘Escape from Fontanellato’ was that I too was in the throes of being diagnosed with cancer and recovering from all sorts of hellish treatments and surgeries to ensure that I had a few more years left on this mortal coil to finish the journey I had commenced, prior to my diagnosis, of finding out about my Dad’s wartime exploits.

I have already wondered while reading this book myself, just what other relatives of POW’s are thinking when they have read it, but then I found out that someone else, who has no connection with Fontanellato or any other wartime exploits as far as I know, is as gripped by the story as I am and, like me, just wants to find out what actually happened. Or in my case where did my Dad go, and who was it that provided him with food and shelter, and what happened to some of the people he knew and met?

It was when I started reading the following extract from Professor Tregay’s summary of his investigations that I realised I was not the only person on the planet that was intrigued by this extraordinary period in time –

“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 triggered one of the most thrilling adventures in detection of my life.“

Professor Robert Tregay – The True Story of Eric Newby’s “Love and War in the Apennines”.