Doncaster Racecourse's secret wartime history inspires chilling new crime novel

The little-known history of a Second World War prisoner-of-war camp at Doncaster Racecourse has helped inspire Surviving Angel, a chilling new historical crime novel by South Yorkshire author David James Buckley. Drawing on the racecourse's wartime past, his own memories of attending race meetings in Doncaster, and disturbing accounts of Britain's wartime interrogation centres, Buckley has created a murder mystery set in 1958 in which a Yorkshire detective uncovers secrets stretching back to the war, with devastating consequences for those caught up in the investigation.

For generations, Doncaster Racecourse has been associated with the excitement of racing and the historic St Leger, but its grounds also played a very different role during the Second World War. The site was used to accommodate prisoners of war, a lesser-known chapter of local history that has helped inspire Surviving Angel, the second historical crime novel from Sheffield-based David James Buckley.

The wartime camp, recorded as Racecourse Camp Doncaster, was situated at the racecourse on Town Moor and formed part of the network of prisoner-of-war facilities established across Britain during the conflict. Historical records identify the site as Camp No. 6, while surviving local archive records include plans for a prisoner-of-war cage at the racecourse, offering a glimpse into an aspect of Doncaster's history that is far less familiar than its racing heritage.

Buckley, who has attended race meetings at Doncaster over the years, became interested in the contrast between the racecourse he knew as a visitor and its wartime role. The discovery helped him imagine how a familiar public landmark could acquire an entirely different atmosphere in a story involving prisoners, military intelligence and secrets that remained unresolved long after the war.

That history contributed to the creation of a Doncaster prison guard whose familyis threatened by the aftermath of his service, and a link between the novel’s Yorkshire setting and the wider story of Britain’s wartime interrogation system.

A second, more disturbing influence was the London Cage, a British military intelligence interrogation centre in Kensington Palace Gardens where enemy prisoners were questioned during the Second World War. Allegations of brutal treatment at the London centre prompted Buckley to consider what might happen if a detective investigating an apparently ordinary murder began uncovering events that people in positions of authority had spent years trying to conceal.

Other historical mysteries also helped shape the novel, including the disappearance of Polish Catholic priest Father Henry Borynski in Bradford in 1953 and the unsolved murder of farmworker Charles Walton in Warwickshire in 1945. Buckley has woven these different inspirations into a fictional investigation exploring how events from the war and its aftermath could continue to affect people's lives in the late 1950s.

Set in 1958, Surviving Angel follows Acting Chief Inspector Jim Bible as he investigates the murder of a husband and wife found dead in their cottage, with their 11-year-old son initially missing. As further deaths occur and connections emerge between apparently unrelated incidents, Bible and his colleague Detective Sergeant Bill Ward find themselves drawn into a nationwide mystery involving wartime secrets and official secrecy, while the growing danger begins to threaten Bible's own family.

The novel also captures a period of considerable change in Britain, with the newly formed Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the continuing requirement for young men to undertake National Service and growing tensions between generations reflected in Bible's home life. His wife Shirley's political interests and his teenage son Ricky's concerns about National Service challenge the views of a detective who believes strongly in duty and responsibility, adding a personal dimension to the wider mystery.

Surviving Angel is Buckley's second historical crime novel, following his debut, Stone and Water, which introduced Jim Bible in a story set in 1956. A former English teacher, journalist and BBC radio playwright, Buckley has spent several years researching and revising the new novel, bringing together his interest in history, his memories of Yorkshire and the unsettling possibilities of a murder investigation that reaches into Britain's wartime past.

David James Buckley said, “I've always enjoyed going to the races at Doncaster, and I suppose you don't often stop to think about what a familiar place might have looked like in a completely different period of history. When you're writing a novel set in the past, you start looking at places in a different way, imagining the people who were there before you and the things they might have experienced.

“What particularly interested me was the idea that something which happened during the war could still have consequences in 1958. The war had been over for more than a decade, but it was hardly ancient history to the people living through that period. There would have been plenty of people who had experiences they didn't want to discuss, and others who might have had very good reasons for wanting the past to stay buried.

“I wanted Jim Bible to be a fairly ordinary, conscientious policeman rather than the sort of detective who breaks every rule and somehow gets away with it. He's trying to do his job properly, but the further he gets into the investigation, the more difficult it becomes to know whom he can trust. At the same time, he has a wife and children to think about, and I wanted that conflict between his duty and his family to feel very real.

“For me, the attraction of historical crime fiction is that you can take something rooted in real history and use it to explore how people might have behaved when faced with extraordinary circumstances. I hope readers will be drawn into the mystery, but also come away thinking a little differently about the Britain of the 1950s and the wartime experiences that were still casting a shadow over it.”

Surviving Angel is available now in paperback and on Kindle, for more information please visit www.davidjamesbuckley.com or www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0H68LGXP4