A rich, dense family history, with many a light touch of wit. Probert’s curiosity is catching: we are eagerly at her elbow as she searches far, wide and deep for the trail of her father’s audacious transformations. —Helen Garner

About the Book:

Major Bill Probert emerged from the Second World War a decorated war hero, a gifted linguist in the Intelligence Corps. He met the love of his life, a beautiful Oxford graduate, when they were both posted to the Allied Control Commission occupying Vienna in 1945. He was a cultured and ambitious Englishman, with no living family of his own.

After a successful international business career, Bill retires at 59, only to reinvent himself first as a fly fisherman and farmer in Wales, and then – for the last decade of his life – as a resident of the Béarn, lover of the Pyrénées and everything French.

Four months after he was buried in St Faust de Haut a letter arrives for him, announcing that his nephew Denzil, from Brecon in Wales, has finally found him, and is coming to visit. Bill’s wife and children were about to learn that Bill began life as Roy, in an impoverished Welsh mining family in the Rhondda. His mother and three siblings were alive and well when his children were born.

Why did Roy decide to become Bill and erase Wales and his family? Thirty years after his death it was time to unearth his many secrets. This is the story of a daughter’s hunt for her perplexing and unpredictable father.

About the Author:

Belinda Probert is the author of books about Northern Ireland, gender equity, and working lives in Australia. Her most recent book Imaginative Possession: Learning to Live in the Antipodes, describes her attempts to understand the landscapes of Australia and the people who have shaped them.

ISBN: 978-0-6459840-4-0

Cover artwork: Bill and Janet on their wedding day, 28 November 1946.