WWTBAM Bored

Air Vice-marshal Tom Howell, who has died aged 94, rose to senior rank in the RAF's engineering branch having suffered great privation in Java and Changi Jail after the Japanese had overrun Singapore and the Dutch East Indies in 1942.

In late 1943 he was transferred to Changi Jail where he shared a cell with James Clavell, the author of King Rat, and an American NCO who was apparently the model for the anti-hero of the book.