The unsung soldier who was Hull's lost hero

Dan Billany is a minor figure in 20th-century English letters, but an original and haunting one. Of four books he completed, three were published posthumously. He was born in 1913 into an impoverished working-class family in Hull (three out of six children died in infancy), and his formative years followed closely those of one of his heroes, D H Lawrence.

Dan Billany is a minor figure in 20th-century English letters, but an original and haunting one. Of four books he completed, three were published posthumously. He was born in 1913 into an impoverished working-class family in Hull (three out of six children died in infancy), and his formative years followed closely those of one of his heroes, D H Lawrence.

He was an avid reader, with a passion for Romantic poetry and left-wing politics, who gave up an engineering apprenticeship to study at night-school and eventually won a place at Hull University. He became an elementary school teacher. His first novel, a thriller called The Opera House Murders, was published by Faber when he was 27. It secured the keen interest of T S Eliot at Faber, who saw a stellar career in the making. Then came the war.

Billany's active service was short-lived. He left England in February 1942 on the Mauretania, bound for Egypt. There he joined the 4th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment, part of the 150 Brigade, which after heavy fighting was defeated by Rommel's Afrika Korps at Gazala near Tobruk. All survivors were transported to Italy where they were held in camps until the Italian armistice of August 1943. Then many went on the run, seeking to join the Allied forces who had landed in the south of Italy.

In the confinement of the prison camp, Billany ironically discovered a more authentic voice: a confessional, witty but earnest voice, unusually honest about his own homosexuality, as well as his passion for social justice. Two books emerged from these inauspicious conditions: a fine and deeply unsettling autobiographical novel, The Trap, and The Cage, a documentary record of camp life written jointly with fellow-prisoner David Dowie - with whom Billany was hopelessly and unrequitedly in love.

The voice which speaks through these books still seems alive and contemporary. Both are full of deft and finely drawn characterisation: of the family and friends he was separated from, and of his fellow prisoners. Of all the books to emerge from the Second World War, The Trap and The Cage are still regarded as among the most original. The former is frequently reprinted and has been translated into many languages.

Both manuscripts were written in cheap exercise books bought from the Italian guards, and taken by Billany and Dowie when they escaped. In fact, the last chapter of The Cage was written in hiding. On the journey south, Billany gave the manuscripts to an Italian farmer for safe-keeping, with an address to which they should be posted at the end of the war.

A parcel holding the exercise books arrived at Billany's family home on 21 March 1946, and the books were published to international acclaim - with additional poignancy, as Billany and Dowie had gone missing without trace. It is now believed that they died of exposure in the Apennines, their last movements noted at Capistrello in September 1943.

The short but sensitively written biography - the result of a lifetime's interest by two local admirers - tells this tragic story very well, although the reader coming new to Billany only fully realises his significance towards the end. His achievements would have been better asserted at the outset.

The book also provides a lively portrait of Billany's native city. Hull families were evidently grateful for the opportunities given by local institutions such as the Technical College and University. There was also strong loyalty to the East Yorkshire Regiment, with its contingent of Hull dockers and fishermen, which fought so tenaciously in the desert campaigns.

Such vital provincial histories challenge the contempt with which our current political culture regards local politics and history. The local and the modern have been seen as incompatible in the rhetoric of both Thatcher and Blair. In the coming debate about a more inclusive definition of Englishness, voices such as Billany's - and biographies and local histories such as this - are likely to be critical.