to jump barbed-wire barricades. The BBC report noted that "Ash modestly denied the claim. For one thing he didn't ride a motorbike, he said. For another, he did not take part in the breakout from the Stalag Luft III camp, on which the movie is based. But the reason he did not participate is that he was locked up in the 'cooler' […] as punishment for another escape attempt". In Britain Demobilised back in England at war's end, Ash discovered that the act of "taking the King's shilling" in 1939 had robbed him of his US citizenship and that he was now a stateless person. He acquired British citizenship and went up to Balliol College, Oxford, on a veteran's scholarship, to read PPE. He then joined the BBC, working alongside a young Tony Benn, who became a lifelong friend. Sent to India as the Corporation's main representative on the subcontinent, Ash was influenced by Nehru's brand of socialism, and by the time he returned to Britain in the late 1950s his politics had solidified into a hard-boiled Marxism. He became involved in left-wing "street politics", including the post-war anti-fascist movement, but his late-blooming revolutionary tendencies eventually proved too much for the BBC, which fired him – though he managed to cling on to freelance employment in the radio drama department as a script reader. Beginning in the 1960s, Ash wrote a series of novels, including Choice of Arms and Ride a Paper Tiger. Politics, however, remained his chief interest. Finding him too quirky and individualistic, the Communist Party rejected his application for membership, and he co-founded the Communist Party of Britain Marxist–Leninist. He also brought his academic background to bear on the subject, publishing a study entitled Marxist Morality. In later life Ash served for several years as chairman of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain and helped to encourage young writers through his work as a script reader for BBC Radio and later as literary manager at the Soho Theatre. His book The Way to Write Radio Drama remained the best on the subject for more than 20 years. Later, he was able to work as a freelancer for the BBC's radio drama department as a script reader. He died at the age of 96 in London on 26 April 2014. Personal life Ash's first marriage, in 1946 to Patricia Rambault – with whom he had a son and