Robert Kee's vivid account of his years in a German prisoner-of-war camp - and his flight across Europe when he escaped. A classis survival story.
Journalist and broadcaster Robert Kee was an RAF bomber pilot in the Second World War. When his plane was shot down over Nazi-occupied Holland, he was captured and spent three years and three months in a German POW camp.
From the beginning he was intent on escape. After several false starts, he finally made it.
First published in 1947 as a novel, but now revealed to be an autobiography, A Crowd Is Not Company recounts Kee's experiences as a prisoner of war and describes in compelling detail his desperate journey across Poland - a journey that meant running the gauntlet of Nazism.
"Arguably the best POW book ever written" - THE TIMES
"A wonderfully impartial, unjudging account of the way feelings and imagination are shrunk and benumbed in a cramped and crowded world" - LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
"Certain pages of this book, especially those about being questioned while on the run, still make my blood run cold . . . Dozens of accurate and perceptive images stop one in one's tracks" - OBSERVER
"His depiction of frightened, desperate men grappling for hope is touching and thought-provokling" - BIG ISSUE IN THE NORTH
"Robert Kee went on to have a distinguished career as a writer and in television, but this marvellous memoir may well be his finest acheivement." - OLDIE