Daughter Brings To Life Her Dad’s Dream For A Caravan, Taken From Plans Found In His Secret Wartime Diaries During His Time As A Japanese Prisoner Of WWII

WWII POW Reg Newman dreamed of returning to the UK and building the luxury 1930s caravan he’d designed. While incarcerated at a prison camp in Borneo, he made meticulously illustrated designs for the holiday home. When he was released after three years and five months, he was too traumatised to get his caravan made. His daughter, Jan Fursier, found plans and asked Channel 4’s Amazing Spaces to bring her dad’s dream to life.

More info: Daily Mail (h/t: messynessychic)

Inside, the touring caravan has bespoke furniture including carved oak handles, two single beds and the gas stove that Mr Newman wanted.

When Jan takes her family to look around the caravan, placed at an old family holiday spot in Dina’s Cross, Pembrokeshire, she’s reduced to tears, saying: “He’d have been blown away, it’s a shame he never got as far as trying to make it.”

Architect George Clarke said of the creation: “She [the caravan] looks like the drawing, she looks like the wobbly, slightly quirky drawing.”