Visitors from London

Visitors from London is a children's novel written by Kitty Barne, illustrated with 40 drawings by Ruth Gervis, published by Dent in 1940.

[2] Set in Sussex, it is a story of World War II on the home front; it features preparing for and hosting children evacuated from London.

Seventeen young Cockney evacuees who have never been out of London are coming to stay at Steadings, a nearby farmhouse which has been standing empty.

The author knew the subject first hand, being involved in Operation Pied Piper, the initial phase of the evacuation of children from the cities to the English countryside during the Second World War.

The humour of the book is praised by Marcus Crouch, who says: "Kitty Barne sought out, with characteristic sincerity and sharp observation, the comic, as well as the pathetic, elements in the strange social experiment of the Evacuation... [exploring] with good-humoured shrewdness the dilemmas of the visitors and the visited.