ITWAS a special delivery more than 70 years in the making — from the battlefields of North Africa and a series of Prisoner of War camps to a village social club in Hampshire.
When Margaret Boanas handed over a small leatherbound wartime copy of the New Testament to Paddy Douglas last month, it marked the fulfilment of an undertaking linking both of their fathers since 1943.
Two years earlier, in April 1941, Mr Douglas’s father, Albert, then 31, was carrying the pocket Bible when he was captured by Rommel’s Afrika Korps at Sidi Barrani, Egypt, while serving with the Royal Army Service Corps in North Africa. Inside it, the Lance Corporal, from Belfast, kept a precious photograph of himself and his wife, Ellen, whom he married two years before the outbreak of war.
A devout Christian, he drew comfort during his captivity from a hand-written inscription on the facing page carrying a verse from the book of Joshua, reading: “Be strong and of good courage, be not afraid neither be thou dismayed for the Lord thy God is with thee.”
He carried it with him as he was shipped across the Mediterranean first to a holding camp in southern Italy, then further north to Camp 59 at Servigliano where he and his fellow prisoners were put to work in a labour camp.
It was during one such work party in 1943, that he and
From left: Paddy Douglas, Margaret Boanas and Rowland Clarke
another British soldier seized a moment of opportunity and made an escape. They spent months passing from place to place, sheltered by Italians, finally crossing into Zermatt in Switzerland. He walked into the village on the day of his wedding anniversary.
He was eventually transferred back to the UK just before D-Day, weighing just six stone. He later said faith had kept him going.
Among a smattering of personal possessions he was forced to leave behind as he escaped was the New Testament. But, crucially, inside he had added a new inscription in pencil, now only faintly visible, giving his home address and service number, adding: “If anyone should ever find this book will they please return to L/CPL Douglas, Belfast, Ireland, as it means more than all the world to me and is of great sentimental value.”
One of his fellow prisoners, Sapper George Alan Boanas, a driver from 4 Field Squadron, Royal Engineers, retrieved it, resolving to return it if ever he had the chance.
Sapper Boanas’s ordeal as a PoW would last until 1945,
his when he was freed from the Stalag Luft IV labour camp in Poland. He was then passed to the care of the Americans.
When Mr Boanas wrote to the address provided in the Woodvale area of west Belfast, he learnt that the house had been demolished and drew a blank.
“My Dad always wanted the Bible to be returned. It had been kept in beautiful condition which is testimony to just how much he had looked after it,” said Ms Boanas.
She later sought the help of Rowland Clarke, a friend’s neighbour who researched family trees as a hobby.
Through his connections in the Royal British Legion, Mr Clarke found Mr Douglas’s service records and placed a small appeal for help in the organisation’s magazine. That, in turn, was picked up by Sunday Life, a Northern Ireland newspaper.
A clipping of the article was posted anonymously to Mr Douglas’s son, also called Albert but known by his middle name Patrick, a former major in the Royal Irish Rangers, who lives in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire.
Mr Clarke arranged a meeting in his village sports and social club where the Bible finally completed its journey back to the Douglas family.
“It was emotional. I had done something that my father wanted done for 70 years,” said Ms Boanas.
Mr Clarke said: “It felt wonderful. Paddy was in tears, it was so emotional for him to have the New Testament with all of his dad’s writing, it was quite unbelievable.” THE EXTRAORDINARY lengths to which JK Rowling and her publishers went to ensure the secrets of Harry Potter were not uncovered have been revealed in a tale of subterfuge nearly as remarkable as her fictional plots.
A new bibliography of Rowling’s writing has shared the inner workings of her team, disclosing how they protected her ideas with a mixture of fake titles, an internet ban and a Sainsbury’s plastic bag.
Rowling’s editor, Emma Matthewson, it reveals, worked on a computer disconnected from the internet so hackers could not penetrate her files.
By the seventh and final novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, excitement had reached such fever pitch that the small team permitted to see the drafts were compelled to invent false names.
Afirst draft was code-named Edinburgh Potters, a title considered so dull that no one would seek to read it.
The bibliography, which took author Philip Errington five years of research in the Bloomsbury archives, is the most comprehensive study of Rowling’s publications so far.
Errington, a manuscript and books specialist at Sotheby’s, was granted access to the inside story of the novels.
One passage in the book reveals how the Telegraph did its bit for the series success, using a photograph of eager children queuing for the third novel on the front page in 1999 and sparking the interest of other national news outlets.
Dr Errington also describes how the finished manuscript of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was handed over by Rowling’s agent to Nigel Newton, the Bloomsbury chief executive, concealed in a Sainsbury’s carrier bag during a secret rendezvous in a pub. JK Rowling: A Bibliography 1997-2013 by Philip W Errington is published by Bloomsbury and out now.
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