'We Have a Library in Mind'

The Imperial War Museum archived Anthony Smelt’s personal papers because he spent three years of the Second World War interned in Batu Lintang, a camp in Borneo. He had been working as a civil servant in British North Borneo until the Japanese invaded at the beginning of 1942. In those years of captivity, he was an active member of the camp, documenting the diet of his fellow internees and contributing to various aspects of their lives. He was later awarded an OBE for his services during internment, when POWs and civilian internees alike endured food shortages, disease, forced labour, brutal treatment, and lack of adequate clothing and living quarters. Of the approximately 2,000 British POWs held at Batu Lintang, over two-thirds died during or as a result of their captivity.

An additional cruelty was enforced boredom. With so many types of recreation forbidden, however, a dozen of the men – all identified by the author from an encoded list in her grandfather Anthony’s papers – decided to invent a magical library.

Offering short biographies of the main protagonists, descriptions of their experiences in camp and a concise examination of the ‘library’ itself, Lucy Alexander has revealed an astonishing exercise in mental survival under the most appalling circumstances.