# Eric Farrar Firstly: Your father is a war hero - who endured terrible trauma. I have deep respect for him - and your mother. [You \[00:10:47\]:](https://www.happyscribe.com/public/desert-island-discs/professor-sir-jeremy-farrar#paragraph_647?utm_source=public_transcript&utm_medium=highlight_copy&utm_campaign=public_promo) *He (Eric Farrar) was part of the British Expeditionary Force that went to fight in Europe in 1939 and was captured just outside*[ *Dunkirk*](https://www.britannica.com/event/Dunkirk-evacuation)* in the spring of 1940 and was a prisoner of war in a German prison camp until the end of the war in 1945. And he came back to Britain, then hadn't been able to go to university. And he was given a lift (to a) debriefing because I think he’d escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp or something.* A little surprising you’re not sure about whether he’d escaped or not - but it’s normal that people don’t like to talk about trauma - even with family. [\[00:11:16\]:](https://www.happyscribe.com/public/desert-island-discs/professor-sir-jeremy-farrar#paragraph_676?utm_source=public_transcript&utm_medium=highlight_copy&utm_campaign=public_promo) *And my mother had been a driver during the war. She had driven these huge American people, carriers (sic)* (from the transcript of the podcast - listening to it later, i realized she was driving* huge American people-carriers - ****not**** huge American people) from the ports in Scotland down to the south coast in 1943 and 1944, preparing for the invasion of Europe and VE Day. * *She was driving my father for some debriefing. He was an enlisted soldier. He wasn't an officer, but he had some information about the prisoner of war camps in Germany.* (Which is how they met.) Although officers were not required to work, he was an enlisted soldier, so that means[ five years hard labour](https://time.com/4869347/dunkirk-aftermath-history/) in the camp on low food rations - with the constant threat of punishment or even execution. That will *break a man down*. If he did escape and was then recaptured, they would have made life hell. That’s a lot of trauma - fully-franked with PTSD for life. After the war, Eric and your mother began the next stage of their lives as* just two *[*itinerant people*](https://www.happyscribe.com/public/desert-island-discs/professor-sir-jeremy-farrar#paragraph_717?utm_source=public_transcript&utm_medium=highlight_copy&utm_campaign=public_promo)* - adventurers - travelling around the world for many, many years.* PTSD would explain that. Even a natural high dose of wanderlust, though with a family of six children, it’s a big deal to relocate so many times. The countries that he chose - Singapore, Yemen, Egypt, Cyprus, Libya - it does seem plausible he was working as an intelligence gathering agent for the British military - and went wherever he was deployed. It’d be a good fit for the restlessness. But so is English teacher - quite plausible - not sure why i’m even talking about it - whatever - he worked hard - hard enough to send you to a [posh school in England](https://www.churcherscollege.com/). But as to *how-the-heck* you got into University College London - and then Oxford? Don’t quite buy that *door-knocking* story - the *chance meeting* with[ Robin Forrest](http://formosahut.com/forum/index.php?id=3133). Sounds like someone had some *clout *somewhere? You do have that natural affinity with the *deep-state* influencers - the layer of established power beneath politicians. For someone born n raised in a world of international intelligence gathering, a closed-circle power-cohort-with-a-globalized-agenda *would *seem normal. At the end of the day though, you blazed your own trail. The consequences of your actions are yours to own - not your father’s.