With all his books, Brickhill would correct and polish proofs up to the moment the book went to print. On the agreed delivery date, he handed in the completed draft to David Higham, who passed it onto John Pudney at Evans Brothers. Armed with their comments, he did a final polish.

'This book,' he would say, 'is the story of achievement against impossible odds.'īrickhill subsequently sent the manuscript out to all the men he'd talked to in the course of researching the book.

Harsh soon sent the manuscript back to Brickhill, with his congratulations and his thanks. 'Whew!' exclaimed Eleanor, lying back, physically and emotionally exhausted. But she knew his mind wasn't in New York it was in Sagan. He continued to stare out at the city beyond their window. With the sun rising over Manhattan, Eleanor Harsh laid the last page atop the pile, and looked over to her husband. All through the night, as if possessed by some strange power, they read without pause. She would pile completed pages on the floor between them. Harsh would read a page, then pass it to her to read. Harsh took the manuscript home, and after dinner he and his new wife, Eleanor, had begun reading. Harsh too had been in Sagan, at Stalag Luft 3 and, before a transfer, involved in planning for the breakout.Īustralian author Paul Brickhill, with his beautiful wife, Margot, arrived back in Sydney in 1953 as a success story. At his office several days earlier he'd received a package in the mail from Paul Brickhill in London – the manuscript to Brickhill's The Great Escape, neatly typed by the author on loose pages.īrickhill was asking for his comments, suggestions and corrections. In his New York City apartment, George Harsh sat gazing absently out the window. This is an edited extract from a new biography, The Hero Maker by Stephen Dando-Collins. With his writing after the war, he would make Stalag Luft 3 world famous and it would make him world famous too.

Brickhill had been a journalist in peacetime. Seventy six officers escaped, all but three were recaptured and, tragically, 50 of them were executed. But not only did he manage to escape being blown up in the minefield where his parachute had landed him, he was then sent to a POW camp in Sagan, Silesia, Stalag Luft 3, famous for a mass breakout a year later. The 26-year-old was shot down over Tunisia and captured by Italian soldiers. On March 17, 1943, Australian flight officer Paul Brickhill had two big breaks.

The great escape by paul brickhill