John Castle – författare

The man who broke into Auschwitz. When he was captured in France in 1940 Sergeant-Major Charles Coward launched his own private war against the Germans (although he was being held as a prisoner-of-war). For several years he was the most incredible amateur espionage and sabotage agent of World War Two, opposing the Nazis while sending back vital information to England. He escaped from captivity nine times and was, eventually, sent to Auschwitz III (a labour camp just five miles from Auschwitz II, the extermination camp). He carried guns and dynamite for the Polish underground movement, traded in dead bodies (by swapping the corpses of dead prisoners for Jewish prisoners, allowing the prisoners to escape) and, finally, he smuggled himself into Auschwitz where he witnessed the full horrors of the extermination camp. This is one of the most heroic and extraordinary stories of World War Two. Charles Coward fought the might of the Nazi army and won, his courage is testament to the indomitable human spirit facing overwhelming odds. At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials Coward''s testimony was sensational, allowing over 2,000 Auschwitz survivors to file lawsuits for compensations against their former oppressors.

When George Spencer, a salesman trouble-shooter, managed late one night to catch the last seat on a charter plane at Winnipeg, there was nothing to distinguish the flight from hundreds of others which take place all over the world every day. The fifty-odd passengers were ordinary, intelligent people out to enjoy themselves at an important ball game. The crew were well-trained and efficient. The aircraft was a four-engined luxury plane of the type you would see at any large airport.True, they were late arriving at Winnipeg from Toronto due to local ground fog, but there was nothing alarming in that. It was soon after they had begun the last leg of their journey, across 1,500 miles of rugged mountainous country to Vancouver, that things started to happen - things that could happen anywhere.The reader shares the nerve-wracking tension of an appalling emergency nearly four miles above the earth, learns something of what it means to attempt to control a modern airliner, and follows step by step the urgent developments on the ground.Flight into Danger is a unique collaboration between John Castle and Arthur Hailey, two writers who have each established for himself a considerable reputation for fully-documented, completely realistic suspense. It was originally published in the USA under the title Runway Zero-Eight.