The Escaping Club

The Escaping Club is a book of two halves - the first, and most enjoyable part, being set in Germany during WW1, the second, somewhat disjointed part, set in Asia Minor just before the Armistice. The Kindle version that I read unfortunately lacked a few diagrams which would've made the German part easier to follow, Evans' story-telling made this section quite a page-turner and I enjoyed the whole Ingolstadt saga, appreciating that the quite frequent phrases of French, German and Latin were left unaltered. This is not, as one might imagine, a glorious one-sided John Bull story where British is best and that's that. Evans gives a mostly even-handed commentary on all the people of the various nationalities he met along the way, despite his own unenviable predicaments, often sympathising with their respective circumstances. This is less true of the Turks where ill treatment as a prisoner by most of them has understandably left Evans somewhat bitter towards them as a whole. The general vocabulary and sentiment may seem slightly dated to modern readers, but making allowances for that, this is essentially an enlightening book from a POW's viewpoint in WW1.