After the Armistice between Italy and Allied armed forces in 1943, the author left the prisoner-of-war camp in which he had been held for a year, PG 49 at Fontanellato, and evaded the Germans by going to ground high in the mountains and forests south of the Po River.

In enforced isolation, he was sheltered and protected by an informal and highly courageous network of Italian peasants.

He undergoes a series of bizarre, funny and often dangerous incidents, and in the process meets Wanda, a local Slovene girl who later becomes his wife.

Because Newby has a broken ankle he is abandoned and is hidden in a farmer's hay loft until an Italian doctor takes him to the hospital.

— Simon Mawer[4]Travel writer John Gimlette, writing in The Guardian, comments that "For sheer charm, there's nothing quite like Eric Newby's Love and War in the Apennines.