After the Italian Armistice in 1943, Eric Newby left the prison camp in which hed been held for a year and evaded the advancing Germans by going to ground high in the mountains and forests of the river Po. In strange isolation he was sheltered and protected for over three months by an informal network of Italian peasants. Newby has written a powerful account of these idio After the Italian Armistice in 1943, Eric Newby left the prison camp in which hed been held for a year and evaded the advancing Germans by going to ground high in the mountains and forests of the river Po. In strange isolation he was sheltered and protected for over three months by an informal network of Italian peasants. Newby has written a powerful account of these idiosyncratic and selfless people and of their bleak and unchanging lifestyle - full of funny, bizarre and dangerous incident interwoven with his hopes of the local girl who was to become his wife.