Unremarkable: A Good Place to Start - Softcover

In ‘UNREMARKABLE: A Good Place to Start’, bestselling author Blake Heathcote provides a completely updated and revised telling of the incredible story of John ‘Scruffy’ Weir: a Spitfire pilot in WWII, POW, key man in the infamous Great Escape, and a spy. Drawing on skills he was taught by an Ojibway wilderness guide, and later in SOE commando training, Weir endures a fiery plane crash and four grim years in PoW camps. His crucible of survival is capped by a 350-mile trek forced march in sub-zero weather across Germany to the Baltic Sea in the last months of the war. Blake Heathcote brings to life how Weir was trained – almost from birth – for conditions no-one could ever have anticipated. In this beautiful book, Heathcote paints a moving and affectionate portrait of an extraordinary man – and a true survivor. From the book: “If John accepted, he could never talk about any assignment he was given, nor could he speak of, or in any way acknowledge, the existence of the ‘Network’ with anyone but his Uncle Adrian. What’s more, he would be accountable and on call for the rest of his life. The work would never be particularly easy. There would always be danger and there would be no medals or decorations. The only reward was the assignments themselves. If no-one was aware of him, or what he had done, then he had succeeded. In that regard, the work was the definition of thankless. There would come a time, as there inevitably did in all intelligence work, when John would be asked to take an assignment that he did not want. But refusal was not an option. Volunteering meant there was no turning back.” John ‘Scruffy’ Weir: a most ‘unremarkable’ man. A story you will never forget.

Blake Heathcote was born and raised in Toronto, and worked as a freelance director and playwright in the theatre, subsequently directing many Canadian premieres as well as over a hundred other productions across Canada and in the United States. He has worked as assistant director to renowned Broadway director Hal Prince on three musicals, as well as with playwright/director Sir Alan Ayckbourn in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, where Sir Alan directed two of Blake's plays at the Stephen Joseph Theatre-in-the-Round. He has written fifteen plays, some of which have been produced across North America and in the U.K. In 1999, inspired by his father and grandfather’s experiences in WW 1 and WW 2, Blake conceived the Testaments of Honour project whose objective is to chronicle on video first-hand accounts of Canadian veterans to provide future generations with a richer, deeper understanding of Canadian history through use of first-person testaments. Random House of Canada approached Blake to author books based on his interviews, and he subsequently published his first book, “Testaments of Honour” in October 2002, which became a number one Canadian bestseller. His second book, “A Soldier’s View” also became a bestseller. This was followed by The Survivor: Scruffy’s War” in the fall of 2013, “In Flanders Fields: Writing on War, Loss and Remembrance,” in October 2015, and Unremarkable: A Good Place to Start,” which was published in December 2015. He lives in Toronto and Bracebridge, Ontario.