Behind the lines

North Africa & Italy

September 2016 – July 2017

In December 1940, like most men of his generation, Ian’s great uncle was conscripted into the British military. And like so many of those men, he didn’t speak of the five years he was away from his wife and home playing his part in the Second World War.

He did, however, leave an album of postcards he had collected and photographs he had taken with a simple Brownie camera of the people, places, and railways he refurbished as a Royal Engineer.

In his most personal journey to date, Ian heads behind the lines of World War Two, following in the footsteps and tyre tracks of his great uncle across North Africa and the length of Italy, recreating his photographs and rediscovering his story and the story of the men like him who are no longer here to tell their own astonishing tales.

The five month journey and many weeks of archive research will form the backbone of Ian’s first travelogue since Encircle Africa: Around Africa by Public Transport.