Les Dennison

Leslie Willet Brannen (Les) Dennison was one of only 400 survivors out of a group of 1,600 prisoners of war on the Burma railway during World War II.

Brutality suffered at the hands of others marked the life and psyche of Les Dennison: illegitimate son of a Mayfair skivvy; coal miner and plumber; class warrior and communist cell leader; and war prisoner of the Japanese on the infamous Burma railway.

Yet Dennison was to find redemption through unlikely sources: a fellow building worker and a repentant Japanese general. From then on, he refused to cast himself in the victim role, and he became known, in his home city of Coventry and internationally, as a force for reconciliation, particularly towards Japan.

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