Like most of Eric Newby's writing, this book is excellent. It is his story after the Italian Armistice when POWs were released into the local area. Newby had been captured in a failed raid with the SBS, and by bad luck had broken his ankle a few days before release.More than anything the story he tells is of the generosity of the local Italians who assisted Newby, and other POWs, sheltering them, providing food and drink, assisting them in moving from place to place, always at great risk to them...

Escaped P.O.W., Eric Newby, hides out from German soldiers and fascist sympathisers in the Apennine Mountains of Italy in this true story of Second World War romance and adventure. As you scramble and trek through the wild scenery with this sensitive fugitive (and later accomplished travel writer), the eccentric Italian peasants, alfresco meals and love-interest with Wanda, his Resistance helper, are evoked as vividly as if it all happened yesterday. A charming and absorbing read.

47th book of 2020.I've always struggled with memoirs. Recently, in my MA a woman sent me her work to read (a memoir) and I told her frankly that on the most part, I don't enjoy memoirs. They are too self-indulgent, the writing (in my experience) never seems as good as fiction...I'm thinking specifically of Educated, which everyone seemed to love, but I thought was, well, terrible. It is difficult when talking about a real person and their real life, but I found the voice whiny, irritating and th...

Eric Newby was captured during a failed raid on a Sicilian air base in 1942 and spent time in a POW camp. This memoir tells the story of his captivity, his escape and the subsequent period that he spent hiding in the inhospitable terrain around the village of Fontellanato. For several months, he was sheltered and fed by local people, despite their fear of the German army and the scarcity of their own resources. Amazing story of courage, resilience and human kindness. Newby's style is quite matte...

The font is minuscule!!! My sweet husband will read it instead and give me updates.Now available on audio! :0)*******************Love and War in the Apennines not-for -me*A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush not-for -me*Slowly Down the Ganges 1 star DNF

Absolutely amazing. Told brilliantly, Eric Newby brings every moment to life, taking you right there into the Italian mountains during the last few years of the war. It's incredible how brave and selfless the local people that Eric encountered were, not thinking twice before helping him and others escape and evade the occupying Germans and fascist militias. Eye-opening, awe-inspiring, fascinating. So so glad I read this book.

I wish I could give this classic more than 5 stars. I’ve just read it for the second time since I bought it in 1976. All these years later, it makes sense, now that I live in a similar area in the Tuscan Apennines that he describes so beautifully.Anybody with the slightest interest of WW2 in Italy should read this book. It’s autobiographical. Eric Newby, at the tender age of 22 was an escaped POW and his account shows how truly generous and courageous ordinary Italians were to young British men....

This is an extraordinary account of Eric Newby's survival as a prisoner of War in Italy during World War II. More importantly it is the story of the heroic generosity of the Italian peasants who secretly, and at great personal risk, sheltered the released prisoners after the armistice in 1943, but before the end of the war. The Germans were still fighting the allies in Italy and the Fascists declared death for anyone who aided former POWs. It is also a a story of a time and a sensibility so rem

This true story captures a time, a place and its people perfectly. Set in Italy near the end of WWII, Eric Newby is captured by the Italians during a raid in Sicily, but is later released when they turn against the Nazis. Relying on his wits and the help of charismatic locals, he retreats to ever more remote locations in the Appenine Mountains to evade the advancing German military. The tranquility of his surroundings and selfless generosity of the people, always described beautifully, sit in st...

I first read this book 20 years ago, and I knew I would want to read it again. Having just done so, I can say that it was every bit as good the second time around as it was the first. Newby was a young POW in Italy during WWII. He was able to escape in 1943 while hospitalized for a broken ankle. With the help of sympathetic locals, one of whom was later to become his wife, he spent a year in hiding, being recaptured only late in 1944.Newby tells his story with a charming, self-deprecating humor

I've liked Newby before, but in this the writing was surprisingly bad. (Just one example: ten "and"s and two pages into a sentence, maybe it is time to start a new one?) The story is also not exceptional. Still, Newby is honest. The story picks up when he gets into dialog, and there are several humorous anecdotes, including meeting a German soldier hunting butterflies in the mountains. > "Do not be afraid," he went on. "I will not tell anyone that I have met you, I have no intention of spoiling

This unpretentious but genuinely marvelous account of Eric Newby's harrowing months in the mountains of Italy in 1943 is one of the best books I've read all summer. Newby's style is dry, self-deprecating, and unexpectedly moving – especially when he writes about the remote farmers and villagers who sheltered him at the risk of their lives. This book was his way of thanking them, and it does justice to them all.

A wonderfully inspiring story. During WW2 when Italy was occupied the Italian POW camps broke down and he escaped and was hidden successfully for several months during which time he met his future wife. This is a story of immense bravery, not from the author but from the Italian people who sheltered him and many other allied soldiers all at great personal risk.

This was given to me by a dear friend, who always pushes me out of my comfort zone. I loved this book and the wit/humor of the author. I will read more of his.

Very enjoyable on the whole, I was disappointed with the ending (yes I know there was an epilogue) as it was very abrupt.But still a good read.

My brother gave me this book for Xmas with a note: "I know you don't like war books, but this is more about love than war and I think you'll like it". He was right. It is a marvellous book, more of a well-deserved and loving tribute to the brave Italians who sheltered Eric Newby, than a focus on himself as an escaped POW, or the details of war in Italy in 1943. I don't know how Newby manages to give such a light, sometimes amusing, touch to serious privations, hardship and fear without being ann...

Startlingly good: funny and astonishing in turns. I read this as we were going to Sicily on holiday this month. By sheer coincidence, Newby and I converged toward Catania airport; he from the east having disembarked from a submarine into a canoe and bravely paddling ashore to try and destroy German Junkers on the ground as part of an SBS squad in 1942, and me from the west drinking warm white wine on our Thomson package tour. Newby and his ill-fated team fail to destroy even an electricity pylon...

Love and War in the Apennines (1971) was a perfect holiday read. An adventurous tale of escape and romance set during the collapse of Fascist Italy, the book is a monument to sacrifice, courage, and gratitude. In 1942, Eric Newby (A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, Slowly Down the Ganges) was captured in a botched attempt to raid a Sicilian airfield from the sea. He spent much of the Second World War in prison camps, first in Italy and later in Czechoslovakia. But in the autumn of 1943, he enjoyed

This is a beautifully written, moving, and quite unique book that chronicles the author's experience of living among the people of rural Italy following his release from a prisoner-of-war camp after the Italian armistice in late 1943. It goes far beyond the typical prisoner memoir and is packed full of interesting and amusing personalities, not least the authors future wife. While he writes with nonchalance and great wit, there is also no mistaking the mortal danger that Eric Newby was in while

What an enjoyable book! Eric Newby has such a positive attitude that this is really a very positive, life affirming book, despite the fact that its a WWII POW escape tale. It quickly became apparent that Eric Newby's memoir of his journey out of an Italian prisoner of war camp was at times an enjoyable adventure for him. He has such an optimistic attitude about life it's as though at times he forgets that there's a war on. The true heros of the story are the numerous Italian farmers and families...

I have just reread this some years after I first discovered it, and was surprised to find how much of the story came as a surprise to me as I had forgotten all but the barest outline of the story.Newby has a great gift for storytelling and this one, his own experience as a prisoner of war and then escapee in Italy from 1942 to 1944 is remarkable, the stuff of true adventure stories and told with considerable modesty and with warm, deep gratitude to the mountain people who enabled him, and others...

In the summer of 2008 when we went to Italy, the tour company suggested this book as a background read. It's based in the WWII era and is fascinating. The author tells of his experience as a British soldier captured by the Italians and then the Germans, of his excapes and recapturing, of his falling in love with Wanda, who befriends him although neither speaks the other's language. Whether or not you are planning a trip to Italy, this one is well worth your time.

Newby's writing can be rather dry, but in this recounting of his escape from the Germans in WWII Italy, he strikes a fine balance between mawkish sentimentalism and tough-guy posturing. An engrossing narration about the extraordinary measures ordinary people can and will resort to, to stay alive and to do what they think is right. Encouraging, inspiring, and highly recommended.

His chapter on "an encounter with a member of the master race" (a German lepidopterist assigned to teach Renaissance culture to men bent on destroying it) was humane, funny, and as powerful an indictment of the absurdity of war as anything I've ever read.

A really enjoyable book, really insightful, just got a jolt I the sentence near the end

I wasn't entirely sympathetic to Newby in the first 50 pages or so. His writing about women passing his prison as if they had no other existence but to appear in his imaginings put me off, but once he met a woman he fell in love with that attitude petered off. It didn't disappear, look at his descriptions of Rita and Dolores, but it faded. I could appreciate his story and his manner of telling it. Early on I wondered how he could possibly write this over 25 years later, but ( 272) he was taking

Prior to seeing the collection of Eric Newby books at the bookstall at the Tavistock Pannier Market, I had never heard of him. I now realize two things: I should have purchased them all, and I am kind of smitten. In this memoir of being an POW in Italy during WWII and then a fugitive from the Germans after the Italian Armistice, he recounts what life on the run in Italy is like. It's a pretty surreal experience. Not only does he meet his future wife, he is helped by many Italians who risk their

Another pre-Covid random secondhand purchase, and a good one.Eric Newby gives an account of his WW2 experience in Italy – captured after an unsuccessful SBS mission in Sicily, spending a period of time as a POW in Fontenellato a few miles inland from Pescara on the Adriatic Coast, escaping after the Italian Armistice but then cooped up in an ‘ospedale’ with a broken ankle, being helped to make off into the countryside by a doctor, being refused shelter by one family who pass him on to another up...

Eric Newby was captured by the Fascists after a flubbed attack on an Axis airbase in Sicily. He eventually found himself in a prison hospital on the mainland, injured by falling down stairs, when the Italian Armistice was signed. The temporary peace resulted in his release from prison but also in the Nazis taking control of Italy and putting the Fascists back in charge. Newby and other former prisoners of war were hounded through the mountains for months on end.Every day Italians risked their li...

What a great book. I’ve read Eric Newby before but not recently. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush was a lovely read, Three Men in a Boat meets Pete Boardman’s Sacred Sumits; and the Great Grain Race was a wonderful find in a holiday cottage on a rainy week in the Lakes. But this book, which I “read” via the audiobook read by James Bryce, was unmissable.It tells the story of Newby’s exploits in WW2, when serving in the SBS. A daring but ill-planned raid on Sicily to save the last Maltese convoy fro...