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. Biography: Ben Macintyre is the multimillion-copy bestselling author of books including Colditz, Agent Sonya, SAS: Rogue Heroes, The Spy and the Traitor, Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat and A Spy Among Friends. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Here Ben MacIntyre reveals the real story of Colditz - one not only of bravery, ingenuity and resilience, but also of snobbery, racism, homosexuality, bullying, treachery, insanity and farce.

Some turn out to have feet of clay or to be just unpleasant, many fit easily into the 1950s jolly good chaps stereotype, while others, little known till now, turn out to deserve much more recognition for their conduct and achievements. Many of the emotions felt by the men incarcerated in the medieval castle were the same as those felt by all prisoners of war. Inside, we see one of legendary flyer and double amputee Douglas Bader hauling himself and his tin legs into the cockpit of a Spitfire, another of two Belgian escapers being brought back to the castle at gunpoint and from the Colditz Museum a collection of fake uniforms, ropes, insignia and other escape aids assembled by Rheinhold Eggers, and the drawing of a New Year’s eve 1942 conga of inebriated prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.

The mannerist portal ( rhyolitic tuff) of the church house carved by Andreas Walther II during 1584.

But to keep ourselves on our toes, we have a rule that author gender is alternated, girl-boy-girl-boy, and the continents always rotated (with occasional glitches). But, and there's always a but, it merely skims the surface, skates over the inner courtyard cobblestones.The castle was used by Frederick Augustus III, Elector of Saxony as a workhouse to feed the poor, the ill, and persons who had been arrested. Initially there were French, Polish, Belgian, and Canadian inmates, but from May 1943 the authorities decided to hold only British and American captives. I devoured the BBC’s multi-part series Colditz, shown between 1972 and 1974, and enjoyed it even more when I was able to binge watch it via YouTube some 40-plus years later.