Ken Adams was born in 1919 at Alterton-Bywater near Castleford. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in early 1940 and was captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore. For the next three and half years he worked as a medic in Changi and various POW camps in Thailand treating everything from dysentery to cholera. Post war, he studied government administration and economics at London University and became a senior government official.
He has been married to Marion for over seventy years and has two children, Diane and Mike.