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Title details for Prisoners of the Castle by Ben Macintyre - Available

Prisoners of the Castle

An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

by Ben Macintyre
Ben Macintyre
Audiobook
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1 of 1 copy available
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “entertaining [and] often-moving account” (The Wall Street Journal) of the remarkable POWs whose relentlessly creative attempts to escape a notorious Nazi prison embodied the spirit of resistance against fascism, from the author of The Spy and the Traitor

“Macintyre has a knack for finding the most fascinating story lines in history.”—David Grann, author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon
In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.
But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre’s telling, Colditz’s most famous names—like the indomitable Pat Reid—share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America’s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs.
Prisoners of the Castle traces the war’s arc from within Colditz’s stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler’s war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate at the hands of the Nazis. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 13, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593629260
      • File size: 386521 KB
      • Duration: 13:25:15

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 11, 2022
      In this riveting history of Nazi Germany’s most notorious POW camp, bestseller Macintyre (Agent Sonya) spotlights the indomitable will and creativity of the inmates who tried to escape from it. Colditz, a “grim Gothic castle on a German hilltop,” was where the Nazis sent the most “unruly” Allied prisoners, including journalist Giles Romilly, Winston Churchill’s nephew, and Birendranath Mazumdar, an Indian doctor who volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps and endured the racism of his fellow POWs until he staged a hunger strike that secured his release. The book’s colorful cast also includes Christopher Clayton Hutton, an inventor hired by British intelligence to create “escape equipment” for POWs, who became the inspiration for the fictional character Q in the James Bond novels and movies; Julius Green, a “Jewish dentist from Glasgow” who gathered intelligence from prisoners and guards he treated in POW camps across Germany; and Reinhold Eggers, the “humorless” security chief of Colditz who “treated escape prevention as a branch of logic.” Though attempted “home runs,” or clean getaways in the lingo of Colditz POWs, provide much of the book’s drama, Macintyre also sheds light on how the prisoners relieved their boredom through theatrical productions, reading, and writing poetry. This is another engrossing tale of WWII intrigue from a master of the genre.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrated with the skill of an experienced audiobook narrator, Ben Macintyre's chronicle of life for prisoners of war at Colditz Castle is a fascinating story of survival during WWII. The German army used the castle, known for its exceptional architecture, for four years to house what it considered to be the prisoners most likely to rebel and escape. The stories are captivating, and the many Allied and German characters who populated the prison come to life because of Macintyre's thorough research and dynamic presentation. He seems to relish creating the many personalities, including Pat Reid, a British captive bent on escaping, and Birendranath Mazumdar, an Indian doctor who discovered that prejudice came from many sources, not just his captors. D.J.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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