Last week saw the unveiling of a celebratory sculpture in the Belgian birthplace of Audrey Hepburn. The renowned Hollywood actress was half Dutch and half British, born in Brussels, the daughter of an heiress from Arnhem and an English wastrel who walked out on the family when she was six.
Her exotic international combination of genes and geography explains part of her allure. But Audrey Hepburn would not have existed at all without the intervention of an eccentric Times journalist, who also happened to be a former Fascist and a prisoner in Colditz, the wartime POW camp.
