This was the forbidding opening title scene in the BBC’s iconic 1970s television drama, Colditz, with the outline of Colditz Castle – the notorious second world war prisoner of war (PoW) camp, Offlag IV-C.

Back in the seventies, Colditz was amazingly prominent in British minds, 30 years after the war. The television series ran for two years, based in part on the bestselling books by Pat Reid, one of the first British prisoners to make a ‘home run’ to Britain. (As Nazi Germany controlled most of Europe, getting out of Colditz was just the start of a successful escape.) It was the most successful television drama the BBC had ever made, watched by a third of the viewing public. Most of the prisoners behind the walls of Colditz Castle had already escaped from other German prisoner of war camps, and so were an elite band of escapologists.

I’d barely given Colditz a thought for decades, but that all changed when I read Ben Macintyre’s 2022 book, Colditz, Prisoners of the Castle. Macintyre is a wonderful storyteller, with a knack of uncovering a multitude of spellbinding anecdotes and tales about even familiar topics. My childhood Colditz memories were replaying in my mind as I read his account of the wartime fortress prison.