History book’s 4,000-mile trip back to library

EIGHT years later and 4,000 miles away, a library book has finally been returned.

A copy of Roderick Bailey’s The Wildest Province: SOE In the Land of the Eagle was borrowed from Dudley Library in the West Midlands in 2009.

It has now been handed in to the Boone County Library in Burlington, Kentucky, leaving the English library’s staff baffled.

Jen Beardsmore, head of libraries at Dudley Council, said: ‘We always make every effort to get any outstanding books back but to be honest, after eight years we had written this one off.

‘You can imagine our surprise when out of the blue we had an email from librarians in Kentucky’.

Due to the cost of mailing it to the UK, Dudley has told Boone County to keep the book. Dudley Library fines borrowers 20p a day for unreturned books, but the individual who took out The Wildest Province faces only a capped fine of £4 – if he or she can be traced.

Boone County Library’s Julie Naduad said: ‘Dudley, England, is halfway across the world. I can just imagine what the story is behind this book.

‘How did it get here? Who brought it? Why were they travelling?’

Author Bailey, a historian at the University of Oxford, said: ‘This was the first book I ever wrote and for it suddenly to pop up again is brilliant.’

The book chronicles the efforts of British paratroopers in Albania in 1943.