The Code of Love: An Astonishing True Tale of Secrets, Love, and War [Paperback]

Andro Linklater (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2002

For fifty years, Pamela Kirrage longed to unlock the secrets of her husband’s encrypted war diary. She was on the verge of giving up when she at last found a mathematician who became as obsessed with learning the secrets of the diary as she was. After months of painstaking investigation, he was finally able to crack the code, and in the process uncover the ending to an extraordinary World War II romance.

Pamela fell in love with RAF pilot Donald Hill in the summer of 1939, just a few months before he was sent to fight in Pacific. Although they planned to marry soon, Donald was captured after siege of Hong Kong and spent the next four years in a Japanese POW camp. Donald ultimately returned to Pamela, but he was never able to tell her about those lost years–and Pamela became convinced that the key to their happiness lay within the mysterious diary he brought back from the war. In The Code of Love Andro Linklater uses the decoded diary as well as extensive research and interviews to paint a vivid portrait of the World War II era, turning this dramatic love story into an inspiring, unconventional epic.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This affecting story of an English couple's struggle to keep their love alive despite the damage inflicted by the husband's years as a POW reminds us that real-life traumas are more terrible and less easily resolved than those in war movies. Beautiful, vivacious Pamela Kirrage and quiet, intense RAF pilot Donald Hill fell in love in March 1939, less than four months before Donald was shipped out to Singapore. Captured during the fall of Hong Kong, he spent three and a half years in a Japanese camp, where he subsisted on miniscule rations and saw his companions tortured and killed for their part in an underground operation he had also joined. He recorded his experiences in an encoded diary that came to symbolize for Pamela, who married him in 1946, the crippling sorrows he was unable to share with her. The psychological legacy of Donald's imprisonment, particularly his fits of anger and emotional distance, prompted the Hills to quarrel and Pamela to drink. Unable to live together, miserable apart, they divorced in 1978, but remarried a year before Donald's death in 1985. Only when a British mathematician finally cracked the secret code of Donald's diary (keyed to the letters in his and Pamela's names) in 1996 could she wholly understand his private hell. Veteran nonfiction author Andro Linklater ably interweaves three distinct stories: Pamela and Donald's star-crossed romance, the tragic drama of his wartime suffering and endurance, and the gripping, step-by-step adventure of cracking the diary's code. His sad, moving book acknowledges the agony of a generation haunted by wartime horrors it could never discuss, while honoring the power of love to assuage, if not eliminate, emotional pain. --Wendy Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"I feel that now I can let myself die," whispered a frail and elderly Pamela Kirrage Hill in the spring of 2000 upon seeing the British edition of this book. Six days later she did. A much younger Pamela Kirrage had been a fun-loving model when she met Donald Hill, an RAF officer, just months before he was sent to Hong Kong in WWII. They wouldn't see each other for more than six years. When the British surrendered Hong Kong to the Japanese, Donald was interned in a POW camp, where he scrupulously kept a diary using a complex mathematical code. The emotional trauma of Donald's prison years took a great toll on his and Pamela's marriage; they both turned to drink and eventually divorcedAalthough their mutual passion endured and led to reconciliation. For years, Donald was unwilling to translate his diary, and later he was unable to remember the code. Several years after his death, Pamela brought the diary to Philip Aston, a mathematician who was able to break the code. For the first time, Pamela learned the full story of her husband's wartime experiences and, as she says, could finally see him again as the whole man he had been when they first fell in love. Linklater, a British author (Wild People: Travels with Borneo's Headhunters), describes well the complex world of codes and ciphers as well as Aston's compulsion to decipher Donald's code. Drawing on interviews with Pamela, her children, and other friends and relatives, he also recounts a tragic love story. Linklater's book will captivate readers hungry for a wartime story of love and intrigue. The text of the diary is included in the book, which is also accompanied by an audio CD of a BBC radio documentary made by Linklater. (Feb. 27)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 308 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (January 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385720653
• ISBN-13: 978-0385720656
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,021,182 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply the Best, March 26, 2001

By 

Jackie (Minneapolis, MN, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Code of Love (Hardcover)

This is simply the best book I have read in a long time.

Andro Linklater writes clearly and eloquently about the love affair between Pamela Kirrage and Donald Hill at the eve of World War II. He brings to life the great excitement of their budding romance and the long, difficult years they spent apart, Pamela doing her part to support England's war efforts at home and Donald languishing in a Japanese concentration camp.

The atrocities that Donald experienced are described in a matter of fact manner that does not take away from the sheer horror of what he must have endured. He was determined to document what happened in the camp at the risk of his own life and eventually coded his diary to ensure that it would not be discovered. Through it all, his promise to return to Pamela gave him the will to survive.

Years later after Donald's death, Pamela resolved to know the contents of his diary so she could understand what had happened to him, what had happened to them. I found the efforts to decode his diary just as fascinating as the turbulent relationship between Pamela and Donald.

This is an intelligent and articulate account of two passionate people caught up in the throes of war and their struggle to regain their lives and relationship once reunited. It is a romance, a war history, and a mystery all rolled into one.

I am recommending it to everyone I know. Read it!

5.0 out of 5 stars A view from Historian, December 21, 2011

By 

Rusty - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Code of Love: An Astonishing True Tale of Secrets, Love, and War (Paperback)

As an historian on the Battle of Hong Kong, "The Code of Love" is a book that must be placed in our bookshelf.
Donald Hill's story was completely forgotten in previous studies, who suggested to use the obsolete Vidlebeeste plane for suicidal attack by himself. In his years of capitulation, he saw his close friends killed by Japanese. The only thing kept him alive was simply his love to his fiancee. After the four years in the prisoner camp, he returned to Britain and fulfilled his promise by marrying her. However, he was completely forgotten by the country that he had fought for, he was no longer capable in flying planes and found himself being expelled by the RAF. His memories in the prisoner camp never faded away and haunted him throughout the rest of his life. It is heart-breaking to read about the unfortunate couple split eventually, but still their love continued until his last breathe. And she left, probably back to him, right after this very book published...
Although we seldom placed a non-fiction on our shelf, I strongly recommend to have this book no matter who you are. War is not merely about tactics and strategies, war is meant to be sufferings. And this book clearly, though not consciously perhaps, illustrated how we forgot those brave soldiers who had fought for us all over the world against tyranny and atrocities. Their sufferings were never clear-cut by the end of the war and kept haunting us until the end of their life, and yet we choose not to hear, not to care, not to remember them and provide any help that we can give. They slowly faded away and no one noticed them. It was the love between them and the determination to understand his suffering by his wife, Pamela, that let the story being revealed. Let us read their story, remember their story and let no more suffering ever appear in our world again!

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A true tear jerker!, March 19, 2001

By 

Terry Mathews (a small town in east Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Code of Love (Hardcover)

Pamela Kirrage and Donald Hill were very much in love and living in England right before the outbreak of World War II. Donald was sent overseas and spent three and a half years in a Japanese prison camp. He was never the same after the war, but tried to live a normal life with Pamela and their children.

David kept a diary during his imprisonment, but no one could crack the code until years after Donald's death, when Pamela found a mathematician who solved the mystery.

This book tells Donald and Pamela's sad, but moving story of true love, the horrors of war and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.