David Lascelles for Out of Colditz

David Lascelles is at Topping & Company Booksellers on Thursday 24 September, talking about his new book, Out of Colditz. It's a talk around the story he's written, and he'll be there in person to walk through it.

Out of Colditz is about the 'Prominente' — the high-profile hostages from the British establishment held at the Colditz prisoner-of-war camp. The names involved are the kind you'd expect from a history book: the grandson of a king, the son of the Viceroy of India, and Churchill's nephew. As German defeat loomed, the SS head of the POW camps, Gottlob Berger, disobeyed direct orders and spared their lives, telling them to remember what he'd done for them when the war ended. He was later convicted of war crimes. Lascelles traces their journey and asks what actually motivated Berger's decision.

Lascelles himself has a personal connection to the period. He's the 8th Earl of Harewood, and his father, George, Earl of Harewood, would never have been born if his own father had been executed. Beyond that, he's a BAFTA-winning film and television producer and one of the founders of Heirs of Slavery, a campaign group working to redress the horrors of the Transatlantic slave trade.

The talk is at Topping & Company Booksellers, 1 Museum Street, YO1 7DT — the former Visit York building, now one of the UK's largest independent bookshops. It starts at 7pm, with doors open from 6.30pm.