Hailed as Newby’s ‘masterpiece’, ‘Love and War in the Apennines’ is the gripping real-life story of Newby’s imprisonment and escape from an Italian prison camp during World War II.

Following the Italian Armistice of 1943, Eric Newby escaped from your prison camp in which he’d been held for a year. He evaded the German army by hiding in the caves and forests of Fontanellato, in Italy’s Po Valley. From this picturesque backdrop, he was sheltered for 90 days by a casual network of about Love and War in the Apennines Italian peasants, who given, supported and nursed him, before his eventual recapture.

‘Like and War in the Apennines’ is Newby’s tribute towards the selfless and courageous people who were to become his saviours and companions in this troubled time and of their bleak and unchanging way of life. Of the cast of idiosyncratic personas, perhaps most obviously was the stunning local girl on a bike who would show him the vocabulary, and finally help him escape; two years afterwards they were married and would spend the others of their lives as co-adventurers. Component travelogue, part escape story and component romance, that is a mesmerising accounts of wisdom, courage, humour and experience, and tells the storyplot of the first life of a guy who would become one of Britain’s best-loved literary adventurers.