Code of Love: A True Story

Format:	Paperback 272 pages

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Synopsis

In 1939 Pamela Kirrage, headstrong and beautiful, met Donald Hill, a handsome RAF pilot. But Britain's war with Germany meant their plans for marriage had to be postponed. Hill was posted to Hong Kong, and sensing that he was caught up in the sweep of great events, he began a diary. However, officers serving abroad were forbidden to keep such records, so Hill devised a secret code that transformed his words into numbers. The Donald Hill who returned from the war, after four years in a prisoner of war camp, was a dramatically changed man. Tortured by savage flashbacks, he was confined to hospital. Pamela had always known that the numbers in the school book were a code, and that somewhere within the lines of figures she would discover the key to understanding Donald's mental collapse. Eventually, after Donald's death, she found a mathematician who was able decode the diary and reveal its account of Donald's suffering in the camps.

Book details

Published
01/02/2001

Publisher
Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )

ISBN
9780753811153

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UK Kirkus review

In 1939 Pamela Kirrage, a beautiful and spirited girl, met Donald Hill, an RAF pilot and they fell madly in love and soon become engaged. After enjoying one long halcyon summer together their happiness was abruptly disrupted by the encroaching shadow of war. Posted to Hong Kong Donald began to keep a diary; a practice he continued as a Japanese prisoner of war in 1941. Standard diaries were forbidden so Hill devised an impenetrable code for his memoirs, substituting numbers for letters. Hill survived the war but, like so many others, at a severe cost to his psychological well-being. He returned to England, and married Pamela but the painful memories of captivity returned to haunt him. A decade after his death Pamela took Donald's diary to Dr Philip Aston, a renowned mathematician who eventually managed to decode it. Aston realized that the key to the diary lay in Donald's love for Pamela and he deciphered the code to present her with the missing pieces of a puzzle that had made her husband so difficult to understand. Linklater has fashioned a gripping narrative, unravelling a true story with compelling readability. There are many wartime memoirs but this is a testament of a different kind. (Kirkus UK)