Love and War in the Apennines Audiobook (Free)

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 through the 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. Against this picturesque backdrop, he was sheltered for 90 days by an informal network of about Love and Battle in the Apennines Italian peasants, who fed, backed and nursed him, before his eventual recapture.

‘Like and War in the Apennines’ is Newby’s tribute to the selfless and courageous people who were to be his saviours and companions in this troubled period and of their bleak and unchanging life-style. Of the ensemble of idiosyncratic people, most notable was the stunning local girl on a bike who instruct him the language, and finally help him get away; two years afterwards they were wedded and would spend the others of their lives as co-adventurers. Component travelogue, part get away 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 man who would become one of Britain’s best-loved literary adventurers.