Borrowed Children

'It is estimated that 734,883 unaccompanied children were evacuated in the first days of September 1 939,' Daily Telegraph, 26 January 26, 1940. At the beginning of the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of children left their parents and their homes for the safety of the country. This was a test, not just for the children leaving home, but for the many adults and institutions who took them in, fed them, clothed them and attempted to instil some sense of normalcy into a world that had turned upside down. Borrowed Children is a fascinating record, intimate and actual, of dozens of cases of what happened both in those first extraordinary few days in September, and then in the months that followed.