The Missing Years: A POW's Story from Changi to Hellfire Pass

This is a Secret Memoir of Living Hell ... Revisited 60 years on. Capt Hugh Pilkington enjoyed the full and fun life of a rubber planter in pre-war Malaya. Then war broke out and he found himself fighting in Johor. Blasted by a sniper, he was hospitalised in Singapore, only for the hospital to be overrun by the Japanese in a horrific massacre. Then as a POW he was soon sent to labour on the Death Railway in Thailand. Can you imagine the horrors?

All the while he kept secret diaries, written on paper stolen from the Japanese. Diaries so accurate they were used as atrocity reports in War Crimes trials.

60 years later, with those diaries in my hand, Stuart retraced Capt Pilkington's nightmarish steps, with his son Paul through Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand … and had some really surprising findings and life-changing encounters along the way .

Part Military History. Part Travelogue. Pure Human Spirit!

'Absolutely compelling.' -- John Kerr, Radio 2UE.

'A very, very gripping story ...' -- Graham Mabury, Radio 6PR.

'An amazing read ... a historical document, which Stuart Lloyd has done a fantastic job on.' -- Simon Owens, Radio 3AW.

Voted one of the Top 3 War Books of the Year by The Australian newspaper. Finalist, Book of the Year, Australian Society of Travel Writers.

Why? Because -- through secret diaries written between 1942 and 1945 -- it draws you into the very personal observations of Capt Hugh 'Pilk' Pilkington of the 6th Royal Norfolks. The Missing Years is full of side-by-side comparisons of then and now in Changi and the Alexandra Hospital (Singapore); the former battlefields of Batu Pahat, Parit Sulong and Penang (Malaysia); and the Bridge on the River Kwai and Hellfire Pass (Thailand). They even spent a night in a Malaysian jail to feel what that was really like!

The book is narrated by the author Stuart Lloyd ('The Perfect Storyteller' - The Telegraph, UK) who has lived in Asia for 25 years, and run military history tours.

© 2025 CatMatDog Storytelling (Audiobook): 9798347321575

Release date

Audiobook: 24 January 2025