Best-selling author Denis Avey who claimed he broke into Auschwitz has died aged 96.

Derbyshire man and Second World War prisoner of war Mr Avey wrote The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz which told the tale of how he twice smuggled himself into the Nazi death camp by swapping with a Jewish inmate.

Despite topping the best-seller lists with his novel, his claims have been cast into doubt by historians.

Mr Avey, a former Desert Rat, was taken prisoner in 1942. The following summer he was deported to Auschwitz, and interned in a small PoW camp on the periphery of the IG Farben factory, where he worked alongside Jewish inmates from the main death camp.

In an interview in 2011 he told the JC : "Auschwitz was an evil place. Even nature gave up. I never saw a bird in the sky or a leaf on a tree. I was foolish, inquisitive, I took a chance with my life. But I survived and I need to tell the world what I saw so that it can never happen again."