Dan Billany
Dan Billany | |
---|---|
Born | Daniel Billany 14 November 1913 England |
Disappeared | 20 November 1943 (aged 30) Capistrello, Italy |
Status | Missing for 80 years, 5 months and 7 days; Presumed dead in 1944 |
Dan Billany (14 November 1913 – disappeared 20 November 1943) was an English novelist.
Biography
Billany was born and raised in Hull.[1] He joined the Labour League of Youth and later the Hull Branch of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, but was expelled from the latter in 1933 for his involvement in an internal dispute. He later joined the National Unemployed Workers' Movement.
Billany received a degree in
Throughout the war off duty, Billany concentrated on his writing. The Opera House Murders, a thriller, and The Magic Door, a book for boys, were published in 1940 and 1943, respectively. After the capitulation of Italy in September 1943, Billany fled to the countryside with his manuscripts, working on them for weeks while hiding from the German army. He deposited them with a friendly local who promised to post them to Britain at the conclusion of the war. These manuscripts, The Cage and The Trap, were received by Billany's family in 1946 and eventually published to wide acclaim. In Dockers and Detectives, Ken Worpole lauded The Trap as "the finest novel to come out of the war".
Disappearance
In October 1943, Billany and three friends began to make their way over the
Bibliography
Novels
- The Opera House Murders (1940; published in 1941 in the United States under the title It Takes a Thief)
- The Magic Door (1943)
- The Cage (novel) (with David Dowie) (1949)
- The Trap (1950)
- The Whispering (1942) published 2008 ISBN 978-0-9557117-1-8
See also
References
- ^ a b "Dan Billany - Hull's Lost Hero". Hullwebs.
- ^ a b CWGC casualty record, Cassino Memorial.
- ^ "Dan Billany". andrejkoymasky.com. 13 March 2004. Retrieved 5 September 2017.