Barbed Wire University: A lesson in magic
When entertainers use stage names, it’s almost impossible to research any military connection they have, unless you know their real name. The story below was almost never told, until I spotted, by accident, that the home address of magician Lincoln Lee printed in an old magic magazine matched that of a Lancaster bomber navigator called Leslie Matthews. After that quirky discovery, the Lee/Matthews story – and his time as a POW at the Barbed Wire University – soon revealed itself. A magical start Leslie Albert Matthews (1913-1994) was born in London, England. By the 1930s, he’d established himself as a well-regarded professional magician, performing under the stage name ‘Lincoln Lee.’ He was an early member of The Institute of Magicians (a society for magicians founded in 1934) and performed at their first annual dinner: “Lincoln Lee coupled stories with his tricks and the wand vanish, die box and Buddha mystery passed through his hands to the accom...