The story of a man who printed escape maps during the Second World War after using shower tiles to construct a lithographic press is to be published in book form.
    The Brunswick Prison Camp Map Printers project was launched around three years ago by stonemason and sculptor Mark Evans, whose father Philip Radcliffe-Evans constructed a lithographic press during a period in a POW camp in Germany during the war out of shower tiles and printed hundreds of escape maps.
    Radcliffe-Evans, who died in 1992, went on after the war to become managing director of Liverpool-based printer and bookbinder Tinlings.
     Evans learned of his father’s wartime activities after finding an article he had written on the subject in the Printing Review in 1951. He held on to the article until a chance meeting with one of Radcliffe-Evans’ old apprentices, Ken Burnley, who runs Liverpool-based letterpress studio Juniper Press. Burnley agreed to turn the article and maps into a book, using a Vandercook No.4 Western press with 135gsm Colorplan paper donated by GF Smith.
     The 150-run letterpress edition of the book will be launched at an event in Liverpool on Sunday 26 March and is already taking pre-orders.