You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Hodder & Stoughton has acquired the first biography of Roger Bushell, better known as "Big X", who played a key role in the mass breakout of Allied prisoners from a Second World War prisoner camp, depicted in film "The Great Escape".
Non-fiction publisher Rupert Lancaster bought world rights in the biography, to be written by Simon Pearson, a journalist with the Times, through agent Barbara Levy, acting on behalf of the Bushell Estate, Imperial War Museums and Pearson. The book will be titled Big X: Roger Bushell and the Great Escape, and will be published in association with Imperial War Museums in hardback and e-book in 2013, with the paperback to come in 2014.
2013 marks fifty years since the premiere of "The Great Escape" film, with 2014 the 70th anniversary of the escape itself.
Bushell was murdered on Hitler's orders, but very little was known about him until late last year when Bushell's family donated his private papers to the Imperial War Museums. Pearson drew on these for two articles in the Times last November.
Pearson said: "It's a great honour to be chosen to tell the story of Bushell's life . . . My research has already revealed new insights into this complex and charismatic man—and the Great Escape itself."