The author of The Ruin of All Witches returns with a gripping, vividly told journey of rediscovery, uncovering his uncle-s past as a soldier, prisoner, fugitive and partisan in World War Two Italy
Malcolm Gaskill knew two things about his great-uncle Ralph-s wartime adventures: he-d been a prisoner in Italy, and he-d cut his way out of a train with a knife and fork. Apart from that, he-d faded into family folklore, lost to view. Until, one hot afternoon in an English country garden, a chance conversation set Gaskill on his uncle-s trail-
What Ralph really did in the war was, he discovers, even more extraordinary than the exaggerations of family myth. From last-ditch fighting in the Libyan desert and incarceration in a Puglian prisoner-of-war camp, to desperate, dramatic escapes and the assuming of an entirely new identity among the peasants and partisans of the Italian alps, Gaskill traces a life transformed by conflict, while lifting the curtain on a
