AN uncensored version of a John Masefield book about the evacuation at Dunkirk, officially banned amid fears of its effect on wartime morale, can finally be read.

Sixty years after the end of the Second World War, the Ledbury-born Poet Laureate's work, The Twenty Five Days, is being published in full by the Pen & Sword Press.

Military historian Jon Cooksey, who has written the introduction, will give a talk in the Burgage Hall, which will be free for past and present members of the armed forces.

Although the evacuation of Dunkirk allowed British forces to fight another day, it left the Germans to take control of France.

Peter Carter, chairman of the John Masefield Society, which has organised the talk as its annual lecture, said: "The book was immediately set up, proofed and scheduled for publication later in 1940. Then all further production was stopped - publication was banned."

Masefield's unflinching honesty, not his undoubted patriotism, was probably the key factor that led to suppression. Even the title, revealing the brevity of the campaign before defeat, must have appeared controversial in 1940.

In his preface, Mr Cooksey writes: "It is the story of censorship, suppression and the eventual destruction of the work of an intensely patriotic Poet Laureate, driven to record the service and sacrifice of British heroes, on the orders of those at the very highest levels of British wartime government."

One version eventually appeared in 1972 but not as Masefield had intended. For example, where Masefield wrote about a rescue boat being "rushed and swamped by French soldiers", censorship changed this to "she was unfortunately swamped and washed ashore".

Mr Carter said: "John Masefield, who was of course the Poet Laureate, was encouraged to write the story of the Flanders campaign by the powers that be. He had written about the Gallipoli campaign and the Somme, and so he had good credentials to write about the first major land clash of the Second World War."

The talk is at 7.30pm on Saturday, September 17.