Under the Wire (Transworld / Random House) became a UK best-seller in 2006/7. Written by Brendan Foley with and for its star, the remarkable William Ash, a funny hell-raising Texan who risked his citizenship and his life to fight the Nazis at a time when the USA was not yet in the war.

Bill left the ‘Hungry 30s’ to join the Royal Canadian Air Force and flew Spitfires in combat over England and France. Then, in March 1942, he was shot down over the Pas de Calais. He survived the crash-landing and, thanks to the bravery of the local Resistance, evaded capture for months. In Paris he was betrayed to the Gestapo. Tortured and sentenced to death as a spy, he was saved from the firing squad by the intervention of the Luftwaffe who sent him to the ‘Great Escape’ POW camp, Stalag Luft III, telling him “For you the war is over”. But he was just getting started.

He began his extraordinary ‘unauthorised tour’ of Occupied Europe, breaking out of one camp, being dispatched to the next – in Poland, Germany and Lithuania. Bill became one of only a handful of serial escape artists to attempt more than a dozen break-outs – over the wire, under it in tunnels, through it with cutters or simply strolling out of the camp gates in disguise. He endured extraordinary hardship, frustration and brutality – suffering beatings and solitary confinement, becoming a real life ‘Cooler King’. Through it all, he maintained not just remarkable courage, but also an anarchic sense of humour, great humanity and an unstoppable desire for freedom.  In the words of top writer Alan Plater “Bill Ash makes Steve McQueen look like Jim Carrey”.