A NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Joint Winner of the 2014 Libris Award, Non-Fiction Book of the Year

“As always, Ted Barris, our best writer on Canadians at war, paints small, personal stories on the broad canvas of epic conflict, and in The Great Escape, gives us the real truth on a story we thought we knew. Riveting.” — LINWOOD BARCLAY

A unique retelling of WWII’s most dramatic escape, told through first-hand recollections of the soldiers who experienced it.

On the night of March 24, 1944, eighty airmen crawled through a 400-foot-long tunnel, code-named "Harry," and dashed from Stalag Luft III, the infamous WWII German POW camp. It became known as The Great Escape. The breakout had taken a year to plan, involved 2,000 POWs, and prompted a massive manhunt across occupied Europe. All but three escapees were recaptured, and on Hitler’s orders, fifty were murdered.

Bestselling author Ted Barris revisits the story made famous by the 1963 movie. But he recounts this battle of wits and determination through the voices of those involved. Drawing on the experiences of forty years of experience as a journalist, broadcaster, and historian, Barris assembles original interviews, memoirs, letters, diaries, and personal photos to reconstruct the Great Escape’s untold story.

Not a soldier, but the soldier’s storyteller, not a veteran, but recognized by vets as keeper of the flame, TED BARRIS has published eighteen non-fiction books, half of them wartime histories. He has worked as a broadcaster in electronic media in Canada and the US for forty years. He is a full-time journalism professor at Toronto’s Centennial College and the author of the online column the Barris Beat. His book The Great Escape: A Canadian Story won the 2014 CLA Libris Award for non-fiction book of the year. His latest book, Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen in the Secret Raid Against Nazi Germany, is a national bestseller. 

Ted Barris' profile page

No one tells these stories better than [Ted Barris].

Matt Galloway, host of Metro Morning, CBC Radio

Military historian Ted Barris’s seventeenth book of non-fiction...follows his well-honed and highly successful approach of combining vivid characters with thumping narrative.

Globe and Mail

Barris’s re-examination is both timely and fascinating.

Publishers Weekly