John Alan Lyde Caunter

Born in Banwell, Somerset, on 17 December 1889, he was educated at Uppingham School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, then commissioned into the Gloucestershire Regiment in 1909. During the First World War he was captured by German forces in October 1914, spent much of the war as a prisoner, and escaped from a camp at Schwarmstedt in 1917 before making his way into the neutral Netherlands and back to England.

That experience became his best-known book, 13 Days: The Chronicle of an Escape from a German Prison, published in 1918. The memoir gives a direct, personal account of captivity and escape, and it stands out for the fact that it was illustrated by the author himself.

He continued his army career between the wars and in the Second World War, later serving as commander of the 4th Armoured Brigade in the Western Desert campaign. After retiring from the army in 1944, he became known for shark fishing off Cornwall and founded the Shark Angling Club of Great Britain in 1953, serving as its first president. He died on 20 April 1981 in East Looe, Cornwall.