ARRIVING in Glasgow as an immigrant in 1947, the Polish tailor Mateusz Zajac wasn’t quite sure where he was. "I never know such a thing as Scotland," he said decades later in his idiosyncratic English. "It was all England and that was that." Geographical peripheries are often mysterious, hidden or unknown to the outsider, especially ones with larger neighbours. Zajac had to learn quickly about the cultural specifics of the British Isles.

Just as Mateusz knew nothing about Scotland, however, his new home knew nothing about the young tailor. Save what he chose to tell. In the BBC documentary, Circling a Fox, his son, the actor Matthew Zajac tells a quite astonishing story of how over two decades he uncovered the artfully constructed duplicity of his father. The revelations have at first devastating consequences on Matthew and his family and then deeply moving ones.

The film makes riveting viewing for anybody interested in identity, emotional deception and how great upheaval wreaks havoc on the fate of countless individuals. Unsuspecting to begin with, it also becomes a remarkable journey of self-discovery for Matthew. In response to this family education, the actor wrote a play, The Tailor of Inverness, which started winning awards at the Edinburgh Festival as soon as it opened in 2008. Since then Matthew has toured his two-person show (he is accompanied by a gifted violinist) to acclaim around the world.

The Herald: Mateusz in the Soviet Army 1940-41(back row far right)Mateusz in the Soviet Army 1940-41(back row far right)

When young Mateusz first realised Scotland and England were not the same country in 1947, he would have understood the sensibilities immediately. His own origins were from a region, Galicia, which also lies on the periphery of several larger neighbours and has been tossed from one empire to the next. Russian, German, Austrian, Polish and Ukrainian boots have all trampled on the farmlands around Zajac senior’s home at some point in the previous 200 years.

Indeed violent political turmoil was such a regular characteristic of Mateusz’s home village that noted historian Timothy Snyder gave his book about the region a simple title: Bloodlands. The village’s name, Gniłowoda, seems to reflect this grim historical reality. It means Rotten Water.

Mateusz’s story, as he told it, began with him being drafted into the creaking Polish Army three weeks before Hitler ordered his troops to cross Germany’s border with Poland. At the same time, Stalin’s Red Army invaded from the East. He recalled how as a young recruit the Soviet military quickly captured his platoon by squeezing the Poles into an ever smaller space using a tactic called ‘circling a fox.’

From there the Russians launched Zajac on an extended, grim odyssey ending in the harsh landscape of the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan in central Asia. A series of increasingly far-fetched Boys’ Own adventure stories took him across the Caspian Sea to Tehran before he finally made it to Cairo. As he told Matthew in a series of interviews taped in 1988, Mateusz finally joined the British (English?) Army in Cairo to make his own contribution to the allied war effort. So far, so heroic.

Four years after Mateusz agreed to the interviews, he died. It took his son Matthew another five years before he could bear to listen to the tapes again. When he did, it struck him that some elements of his father’s story just didn’t seem to fit. And so the actor – as he explains in his play – decides to go in search of ‘the ghosts of my Dad’s past.’

At this point, I have to come clean and explain why I have always been inordinately interested in Matthew’s story. I first met him in the autumn of 1978 when he arrived at Bristol University’s Drama Department, the year below me. The first thing everyone notices about about Matthew is his height. Although he measures six foot three, he looks taller – I don’t know why.

The Herald: Dad and his sons in Dalneigh, Inverness 1962Dad and his sons in Dalneigh, Inverness 1962

Yet I was interested in something else – his name. I was learning Czech at the time (which is in the same western Slavic group as Polish) so I guessed where he or his father must have originated. Almost the first thing I said to him was, "So you must be Catholic?" To which Matt replied, "Actually my dad is Protestant." I was surprised. Certainly at the time, a Pole who did not attend mass was almost a living oxymoron, especially if they came from the deep interior of Galicia.

To my great regret, I never met the father although I was introduced to a number of his superbly-tailored suits and coats over the years. But as Matt started to investigate his father’s past, I sensed that he was going to turn up a few surprises and there was a high probability that these would not all be pleasant. By now I had spent many years either living in or travelling across the Bloodlands. Families ripped asunder, betrayal, imprisonment, and massacres hid behind the many smiles of a region which on the surface was sincerely hospitable.

Still I was not prepared for what I witnessed unfold on stage when I saw The Tailor of Inverness for the first time. Matt who has never spoken Polish fluently transformed himself before our eyes into Zajac senior, telling tall tales to excite, blindside and astonish an audience. It was as if one were listening to the many dark fairy tales that populate the region. He is on the stage with the violinist alone for an hour but he leads you seamlessly through different countries, historical periods and emotional landscapes. It is a masterful performance.

It would not be right for me here to give up all the secrets which emerge in Circling a Fox. Suffice it to say that Matthew discovered a half-sister he didn’t know existed and the fact that his father had also fought for the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet Union’s Red Army. Making his own odyssey from Inverness to Galicia, he found that the name of his father’s village was eradicated from the map when the Soviets moved in. Every thirty years or so, history is buried in Galicia.

The crescendo of the film is both utterly unexpected and profoundly uplifting. From the unpromising, deceptive and even barren emotional territory of his father’s life, Matt succeeds in reaping a richly-formed plant of humanity and optimism. And whether you see this on stage or on film, I defy you not to hold back the tears.

Circling a Fox, on BBC Scotland, Tuesday, at 10-11pm