His unit was shipped overseas to take part in the landings at Gallipoli, and when they returned, Toplis was hospitalised for dysentery. Afterwards he briefly worked in a munitions factory. His unit was later posted to Salonika and Egypt, but Toplis was sent back when he contracted malaria. Toplis made a public revisit to Blackwell posing in the uniform of a captain. The visit and some of his anecdotes were reported by the local newspaper, the Nottingham Evening Post, who took a photograph that they later released to the police for his "wanted" notice in 1920. Alleged mutineer In 1978 William Allison and John Fairley published The Monocled Mutineer, in which they portray Percy Toplis as a leading participant in the Étaples mutiny as a consequence of his being among a band of deserters based in that area of France. They say that Toplis was sought in France following the mutiny and posters for his arrest were issued. The fact that the British authorities went to such lengths to apprehend or silence Toplis is thought by Allison and Fairley to add credence to the view that he was one of the only leaders of the mutiny that escaped retribution. After the book was published, Toplis's supposed career as a mutineer was dramatised by Howard Barker in his 1980 play Crimes in Hot Countries, in which he is portrayed as an irrepressibly subversive seducer, "irresponsible and amoral, with little concern as to the consequences of his action for others". The 1986 BBC series entitled The Monocled Mutineer, an adaptation by Alan Bleasdale of the book in which Toplis was played by Paul McGann, portrayed him in a much more positive light. The production fuelled accusations by the Conservative government of the time of left-wing bias at the BBC. It was not only the right-wing press who denounced the accuracy of the series and the book on which it was based; the socialist historian Julian Putkowski, originally recruited as a historical advisor to the programme, also publicly criticised the 'factual errors and misinterpretations that occur in the series'. Putkowski pointed out that it was unlikely that Toplis played any part in the mutiny. It was thought possible that information about any involvement by Percy Toplis in the mutiny by soldiers in the training camp known as The Bull Ring at Étaples would be made clearer in 2017 when the official files regarding