Fifty years on: Colin Davis interviews Eric Cooper. Interview by Colin Davis.

Just over 50 years ago, Eric Cooper was released from the gloomy fortress castle of Colditz after almost 4 years as a prisoner of war. He recently retired to a small village near Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight where his garden looks out over a great sweep of cornland with the long line of the chalk downs in the distance. It is impossible to imagine two more contrasted pictures and I was eager to find out about the old warrior's odyssey as we sat sipping sherry and looking out to that incomparable view.