where to begin?
I have two main collections of books: James Bond novels and POW escapes accounts.

I've got almost all the Bond novels (including a number of first editions) with the exception of John Gardner's Never Send Flowers, so some 40-odd books. Even though I've read them all to the point I've had to replace some of them, I still keep reading them. Sure, I like films, but see them being about the same character (with the exception of On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the recent Casino Royale). Even within the books, I don't much like the John Gardner novels, but it doesn't stop me reading them.

The POW thing comes from a couple of tatty old books my dad gave me when I was a kid: Airey Neave's Little Cyclone and Pat Reid's The Latter Days At Colditz. There's something immensely compelling about the planning, the ingenuity and the courage shown, often by many men barely into their twenties. Many of them escaped, not with the intention of getting home, but just to tie up German manpower to help the war effort. It's also the way they're written - almost no mention of the real hardships, the lack of food, the cold, the threadbare uniforms, being cooped up with a dozen other men in a wooden hut for anything up to six years - yet they're almost always presented as a jolly adventure. Many complain about this, but I think it just shows the spirit of those involved.
Of course, there are also the things that make you angry to read - the execution of 50 'Great Escapers' by the Gestapo, the hundred killed by the Canadian airforce, hundreds dying of cold and starvation on the forced marches and almost worse, the fact that 2,000 never came home at all, but were transported to Siberia by the Russians who were supposed to be freeing them.
Compelling stuff.

But my favourite book of the moment is Ice Cold In Alex. I don't normally have much time for war fiction as there's enough true tales that are usually much more interesting, but this book is an absolute classic. If you've not read it, then do so - it'll save me boring you all by banging on about it...
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Sat 17 May 2008, 11:45, Reply)