http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9511000/9511697.stm
New research has revealed the extraordinary creativity of Allied PoWs
imprisoned during World War II. What do the actors Clive Dunn and
Denholm Elliott, the artist Sir Terry Frost and the cartoonist Ronald
Searle, creator of that byword for schoolday rebellion St Trinian's,
have in common?
They were just four of the hundreds of thousands of men held in camps
across the world during the war, an experience which produced a huge
outpouring of creative activity which transformed their lives as well
as those of countless others.
The caricature of life for Allied PoWs often is often one of
breathless derring-do: tunnelling, jumping or - witness Steve McQueen
in The Great Escape - powering to freedom on a souped-up motorcycle.
On the other hand, books and film have also portrayed PoWs as
brutalised - which certainly was the case with many captured by the
Japanese - or listless and bored, kicking their heels and waiting for
liberation.
Clive Dunn honed his acting skills in a POW camp in Austria In a new
book, The Barbed-Wire University: The Real Lives of Prisoners of War
in the Second World War, author Midge Gillies has revealed another,
far richer, aspect of the story.
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