The Trap

Lieutenant Michael Carr’s peaceful life in a Cornish village is shattered with the outbreak of the Second World War.

German planes are heard droning across darkening skies.

Towns are set ablaze by incendiary bombs.

And Cornwall, though seemingly safe and secluded, is not exempt from the devastation.

While Michael trains for the army in the Cornish countryside, he dreams of a future with this sweetheart, Elizabeth Pascoe.

But they are trapped by the war, which rages on, consuming and destroying ordinary life.

And it is not long before Michael is summoned far from England to the deserts around Tobruk.

Under an unrelenting sun, harried by German tanks, Michael’s life with Elizabeth, suddenly seems unbearably out of reach…

Can Michael survive the war and make it home to Elizabeth?

And even if he does, will things ever be the same again?

‘The Trap’ is a deeply moving love story, an intimate picture of real working life in 1930s Britain, and — unforgettably — a piece of unsurpassed realism about the fighting in North Africa against Rommel, and the innumerable indignities of falling into enemy hands.

Like Michael Carr, Lieutenant Dan Billany fought and was captured in Africa in 1942. He wrote ‘The Trap’ during and after his interment in an Italian P.O.W camp. In 1944 Lt. Billany was mortally wounded trying to put an end to the activities of a camp informer. The manuscripts of ‘The Trap’, written in Italian exercise books, were left in the care of a friendly Italian farmer, who sent them to Billany's parents when the war was over.

‘One of the most powerful English novels to come out of the war’ – MRD Foot, Resistance

‘An exceptional book, even without the campaign in the desert . . . Blisteringly real’ James Hanley

‘As a social document, pathetic and passionate by turns, it is profoundly impressive’ - Times Literary Supplement

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