Beaten to a pile of broken bones, caged, starved and tortured, Eric Lomax was convinced he would never see Britain ever again. He had already experienced the lottery of death among the chain gangs on the Burma-Siam Railway. Now things were even worse. Accused of being a spy, he had been left to the mercies of the Japanese army’s secret police. Among their specialities was what is today known as ‘waterboarding’, when a prisoner undergoes near-drowning. It was surely only a matter of time before he would be put out of his misery.