A novelisation of the career of Lieutenant Guy Barrington. Branded a coward and dishonourably discharged from the British Army for deserting his post during WWII’s Desert War, he had actually been taken prisoner by the Germans and, having escaped, made the difficult decision to stay at his dying brother’s side on the battlefield before returning to his unit.
To prove himself innocent of any hint of cowardice, Barrington joins Churchill’s Scallywags – the secret, civilian suicide squads whose purpose, through dirty tricks and sabotage, was to destabilize any Nazi attempt of an occupation of England. Working with Naval Commander/author, Ian Fleming and “Tommy” Yeo-Thomas (Fleming’s inspiration for James Bond), he continues on as an agent of Britain’s Secret Operations Executive (SOE), taking on covert missions in France.
Eventually, inevitably, he is captured, tortured by the Gestapo and sent to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. By macabre means he escapes and makes a desperate bid to reach Portugal in time to fly home on fated Flight 777 with his famous film star collaborator and propaganda specialist, Leslie Howard.
Australian author, Paula Astridge, was born in the NSW country town of Inverell in 1958. Based in Sydney, she worked for Rolling Stone Magazine and the Newspaper Industry before co-founding a successful Advertising Agency in North Sydney and later pursuing her writing career on a full-time basis.
Her first three books:, Golden Boy, In the Way of the Reich and Kill The Fuhrer focused on WW11, respectively profiling the controversial Albert Speer, Hermann and Albert Goering and the German conspirators of the failed attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life in 1944.
Moving then to concentrate on the largely unknown role Australia has played in world history, her next two books: Waltzing Dixie and Bad Hand tackled, in turn, the untold story of the men from Australia who fought in the American Civil War and the final solution to the mystery of Fletcher Christian after the Bounty mutiny.
Both books piqued interest in the film industry and Bad Hand was nominated for the prestigious UK Mountbatten Literary Award.
Her sixth book: Scallywag combines the best of both returning to the setting of WW11 with an underlying Australian theme.
Deftly combines military and espionage genres
Features the undercover agent who was the real James Bond
Solves the mystery of the notorious shooting down of Flight 777 - and the sacrifice of its famous passenger, Leslie Howard
