THE life and work of best-selling author Dan Billany has provided one of the most enduring mysteries in literature.
And now 65 years after his disappearance, a group of Hull artists are preparing a one-off retrospective looking at the life and work of city-born writer.
Born in 1913 into a poor family in Devon Street, off Hessle Road, Billany left school, like m
any of his peers, at the age of 14 with no qualifications.
But after struggling to educate himself he eventually won a place at the University College of Hull to study for a degree in English.
He became a teacher and his methods, considered novel for the time, produced good results for his students.
The Second World War, however, changed everything.
Billany joined the Army around the same time his first books were published and became an officer in the East Yorkshire Regiment.
When he was captured at Gazala in North Africa by Rommel's troops, he was sent to a prisoner of war camp in Italy.
He went into captivity as a writer with two books to his name; The Opera House Murders, his first, and The Magic Door.
Although Billany's debut novel became an international best-seller, it was the war and his time in POW camps which arguably inspired his best work.
The Trap, a fictionalised account of his early years in Hull and his first taste of Army life, was considered one of the best books to come out of the war, while The Cage, written with fellow prisoner David Dowie, offered an intimate portrait of their life in the camps.
It is not known whether Billany saw the publication of either.
After the capitulation of Italy in 1943, Billany was on the run in the Italian countryside, carrying the manuscripts with him. The documents were posted to his father after the war by an Italian peasant and subsequently published, although Billany's and Dowie's fate remained a mystery.
The story may have ended there had it not been for the discovery, 60 years after it was written, of a fifth book.
A manuscript of The Whispering, a follow-up to the Opera House Murders, was hidden away by Billany's sister Joan and only surfaced when she left it in her will to the care of her daughter, Jodi Weston Brake.
Ms Brake found that two different versions of the manuscript had been started in type, but that most of the pages were in the author's own hand.
After painstakingly piecing the work together, Billany's niece produced a new novel – published this year – which has been the catalyst for the forthcoming tribute to the writer.
An Evening With Dan Billany has been organised by One Off Productions and will be held at the Northern Academy of Performing Arts, in Anlaby Road, Hull, on Saturday, November 15.
It will feature readings from The Whispering, interpretations of some of Billany's poetry in dance, extracts from a Billany biography and scenes from the play Hero by local writer Barrie Wheatley, which dramatises Billany's life story.
Mr Wheatley said The Whispering, a detective story, may find a new generation of readers as it features an off-beat detective who was something of a precursor to the popular Inspector Rebus character created by Scottish writer Ian Rankin.
He said: "It was completely different from the other detectives written at the time; he was a rough diamond."
Ms Weston Brake will be signing copies of The Whispering at the event.
Tickets cost £6 and £4 and can be booked by calling 01482 310690.
The full article contains 614 words and appears in n/a newspaper.
