Customer Reviews

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

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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!

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!

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.