Mary Chamberlain

It was also the inspiration for the Joint Stock production of Caryl Churchill’s award-winning play Fen (1983).

Using oral history, she published two pioneering studies of migration and families, Narratives of Exile and Return[8] and Family Love in the Diaspora: Migration and the Anglo Caribbean Experience,[9] and a further study of decolonization, Empire and Nation-building in the Caribbean: Barbados 1937–1966.

She has been the recipient of a number of research awards and is an adviser to the National Life Story Collection at the British Library[14] and the Raphael Samuel History Centre.

She credits the inspiration for the story to two of her aunts, of whom one left the family and ran away, and the other was imprisoned by the Nazi regime during the Second World War.

[17] Other fiction works include 'The Hidden' in 2019, and 'The Forgotten' in 2021, 'The Lie' in 2023 all published by Oneworld.