Only the very best storytellers can make you think you are actually there. Jim has this gift in spades. You know that sometimes you wish the wittiest people you listen to in a bar, pulling people all around their words, could capture it all in print? Well Jim has, he tells it exactly how he would tell it. Reading his words you can almost be sat there with a cup of tea (or a pint) listening to him as he captures the essence of the times. You just get sweet up in it all as he weaves seamlessly from the laugh-out-loud dark humour and the craic amongst the captives to the cynical brutality of their captors- who see everything and learn absolutely nothing. Their every attempt to break rhe defiance of the prisoners leads only to unshakable bonds forged in the toughest of times,

The innocence and naïvety of it all is there too. Young men willing to risk life and limb, whilst outnumbered ten to one yet stone cold terrified of being seen in the 'wrong' style of clothes- lest they earn themselves a nickname that will last a lifetime.

These were ordinary young fellas, forced by extraordinary circumstances into acts of outrageous bravery and pure defiance and Jim captures it all beautifully, You'll be laughing and crying, happy and sad, absolutely raging and at peace. Sometimes in the same sentence.

My only problem with the book is that there is not more of it. More please Jim. 

Mick 'Boiler' Murphy