Local author’s book is based on his father’s diaries written when he was a prisoner of war

Real-life diaries written in a German prisoner of war camp have been used to tell the true story of how British Merchant Navy men survived four years of captivity during the Second World War.

And the author, West Hill-based Philip Algar, could not have been better placed to write the book; one of the captives was his father.

The Sea, War and Barbed Wire draws on the diaries written by Captain Stanley Algar, who was an oil tanker master at the time.

It tells how he and his colleagues coped with the physical and mental effects of being kept prisone, including near-starvation, before they were finally liberated.

Philip Algar also explores the events leading up to the war, and how the conflict was experienced and understood from behind the walls of the prison camp, including the German propaganda to which the captives were subjected.

Algar has twelve books to his name, and this is the second one based on the wartime experiences of his father.