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Hullwebs History of Hull |
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DAN BILLANY – HULL’S LOST HERO |
There were struggles over money, but he won through, got his degree, and began teaching. His methods were very modern for the times but the children loved him and he insisted they called him ‘Dan’ and not Mr Billany. Then came World War II and Dan joined the army. As an officer in the East Yorkshire Regiment he fought at Gazala in the western desert, was captured by Rommel’s troops and spent from June 1942 to September 1943 as a PoW in Italy. And all this time he was writing. His ambition was to be a writer and during his lifetime he had two books published: a thriller The Opera House Murders (1940) and The Magic Door, a book for boys, in 1943. Both books were published to great acclaim and no less a person than TS Eliot of Faber’s urged him to produce follow-up novels to The Opera House Murders. But it was the war and life in PoW camps which brought out Dan Billany’s best work. The Cage, written jointly with a fellow prisoner during his captivity and The Trap, a fictionalised account of Dan’s own earlier years. The Trap has been described as one of the best books to come out of WWII. Dan never saw the success of his last two books. After the capitulation of Italy in September 1943 he was on the run in the Italian countryside, carrying his manuscripts with him. After the war, the manuscripts were posted to his father and subsequently published, but of Dan, nothing further was heard. Bookshelf
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