PoW dogs and secret tunnels feature in Kew exhibition of great escapes

National Archives display in Kew includes record cards of prisoners who fled in mass breakout in 1944

Of all the daring wartime escape attempts, the great escape, fictionalised in the classic film starring Steve McQueen, is among the most famous.

Eighty years after that audacious breakout from Stalag Luft III on 24 March 1944, means of escape – physical and mental – by prisoners of war and interned civilians in the UK, Europe and east Asia during the second world war, are being told in an exhibition.