Prisoner of the Turnip Heads: Horror, Hunger and Humour in Hong Kong, 1941-45 - Tapa dura

Some of those who suffered at the hands of the Japanese during World War II and have subsequently written of their experiences are at pains to say they bear no grudge. George Wright-Nooth is not cast in that mould. He was a trainee Colonial Police officer studying for his Chinese-language exams when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong, and was to spend the next four years incarcerated in a prison camp. He kept a diary which remained undiscovered, and from which extracts form much of this first-hand account of suffering and brutality during the terrible years of the Japanese occupation.

Major Mark Adkin was commissioned into The Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment in 1956 and served with it and The Royal Anglian Regiment in Germany, Malaya, Mauritius and Aden. On leaving the British Army he joined the Overseas Civil Service and was posted to the Solomon Islands. Transferred to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, he was one of the last British District Officers anywhere in the world. His final overseas post was as a contract officer for five years with the Barbados Defence Force, and it was as the Caribbean operations staff officer that he participated in the US invasion of Grenada in 1983. He now lives in Bedford.