This was a fascinating read, and Gillies' own father was a POW, so she's able to describe his own experiences too. This is a full account of the experiences of POWs, mainly from Germany, Italy and the Far East, and mainly from the officer classes. This was largely because they had more leisure time (aka stretches of boredom, without the resources in some cases to do much to relieve it) and therefore left more in the ways of letters and diaries than those working POWs in the ranks. The horrifying differences between the experiences of those incarcerated in Europe, compared with their fellow combatants in the Far East is fully explored. This is a lively account, relying on the diaries, reminiscences and letters of those who spent their way year largely locked up. The skills the men developed which informed their - often highly successful - later careers are quite astonishing in their breadth and depth.

The book rightly concentrates on the humdrum daily life of the majority. This is not the book in which to find accounts of daring escapes or would-be escapes. I was left impressed by the resilience, ingenuity and dogged persistence of the POWs whose war time years must have been in different ways as difficult as that of many combatants. ( )