The Book

The book is told as a first-person narrative (unusual for Canning) by Peter Barlow, who is convicted of murder after visiting and threatening Hansford, a man who had been blackmailing Barlow's late father. After serving two years, Barlow is sprung from Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight by an old friend, Ross-Piper, and his lugubrious manservant, Drew, so that he can identify the real killer. Waiting at a safe house, he meets Catherine Swinton who is escaping from an amorous boss. She comes with him on the escape boat, helping him foil a murderous attack by two men on the beach just as the boat arrives.

Once on the mainland, Barlow tries to track down people who knew Hansford. He escapes another attack by hiding in the Palm House at Kew Gardens. He finds out that the murder of Hansford was mixed up with the forging of British and American currency using plates created by a Jewish artist who has worked on Operation Bernhard, a Nazi scheme originally based at Sachsenhausen and later at Redl-Zipf. The artist is now living in north Wales, so Barlow sets off for Wales with Catherine, with whom he is now in love. There are confrontations and explanations. The good end well and the wicked end badly, but only just. It is sometimes hard to swallow the implausibilities in the plot and thinness of characterisation, but these are redeemed by some fine descriptive writing and by effective set pieces of action in the prison and at Kew Gardens.

Publishing history

It was published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1956 at 10/6 with an initial print run of 11,500, and was issued in a combined book club edition Castle Minerva and The Hidden Face by the Companion Book Club in 1957 at 5/-; it is fairly common in this form. (Castle Minerva is also partly set in Snowdonia.) There was a paperback in January 1960 at 2/6 in a print run of 30,000. In 1962 there was a simplified version for EFL learners by University of London Press. In 1971 there was a Heinemann uniform edition at 18/-, reprinted in 1973 at £3.90. The American edition by W Sloane in 1956 was titled Burden of Proof. It was serialized by Everybody's in eight parts from 12 March to 30 April 1955 and in various US newspapers in November/December 1955. Both serialisations were under the English title The hidden face.

The book was adapted for radio by A. Elliott Cannon and presented twice with different casts, first on the BBC Home Service on Tuesday 14th June 1960 with Irene Sutcliffe and Simon Lack, and again in the series Saturday Night Theatre on Radio 4 on Saturday 23 January 1971 with Andree Melly as Catherine Swinton and Kelly Francis as Peter Barlow, produced by David Geary. It was also twice read aloud on the BBC Woman's Hour, the first time from 12 February 1958, abridged by P.J.Wright in 12 episodes read by John Westbrook, the second time in 11 episodes abridged by Madge Hart, and read by David Macalister from 17 November 1982.

Escaping from Parkhurst Prison also featured in two of Canning's short stories, "It never pays off" and "Breakaway". We know from a 1966 newspaper interview that Canning was interested in the exploits of Alfred Hinds, a prisoner who had escaped from several prisons in the 1950s including Parkhurst, calling Hinds's book Contempt of Court "good background stuff for what I write".