Many were told that their parents were dead, and parents often believed that their children had been adopted in Britain. Throughout she never judges or apportions blame, instead she focuses on what really counts, reuniting families. Ultimately she becomes centre-stage and she seems to not see the irony of leaving her own young children and husband in England for many months at a time, several times a year to pursue her mission in the Southern hemisphere. This is an event in history that I was not aware of, but sadly know in my heart that it still exists all over the world.

God Bless Margaret Humphreys for persevering in her journey and sharing her story and the stories of countless others who have grown up in such horrible circumstances.She got interested in what happens when adopted children try and trace their biological parents, which as we know is an emotional minefield. THE BOOK THAT EXPOSED THE HEARTBREAKING SCANDAL OF BRITAIN'S FORGOTTEN AND ABUSED CHILD MIGRANTS - now a film, Oranges and Sunshine, starring Emily Watson. Despite the sadness and anger at its centre, hope remains the principal message of this remarkable book. Almost all of the children, from orphanages or children’s homes, had parents who did not realise what was happening. As I read these pages, with the snippets and details of many individual stories, I was reminded of so many people I have met over my years of working in various institutions in Australia where untold stories were ever lurking just below the surface.

My reason for randomly picking to read this book must be to find my brother so that he knows he was never forgotten and always loved and wanted. Many were told that their parents were dead, and parents were told that their children had been adopted. My mother suffered for years with mental illness, my father was somewhat inclined to drink too much and I have often wondered whether we would have been better cared for in a home, foster home, or even adopted. I was shocked and appalled to discover during the time of my own childhood, children were still being shipped off, out of England to other places in the world without their consent or the consent of parents and family! They were told that they were orphans, even as their parents were told that they'd been adopted into loving families in England, or worse, that they'd died of some childhood disease.At first thinking it incredulous, Margaret discovered that this was just the tip of an enormous iceberg. Yes, you are right, there is much that we don’t know and it often takes many years for things to be uncovered. In uncovering these events, Margaret Humphreys set up The Child Migrants Trust, in 1987, to attempt to reunite these ‘lost’ migrant children with any family members who were still living.

She gradually discovered, to her horror, and the horror of the British and Australian public in general, that as many as 150,000 children had been sent (without parent or guardian) from British children’s homes, starting in the 1920s, to a “new life” in Canada, Australia, Rhodesia or New Zealand. For many of them that is the reason they became priest, to hide behind doors and abuse the weak and the vulnerable. Of course, it did take me a bit longer than normal to get through it because there were quite a few times that I had to walk away from it and get a breather. We will discover many more things our Governments have done which as citizens we trust them as being Right,, And yet many things in the past and even now are far from Right… The more we discover the more we learn. It was shocking to realise that Child migration was still happening when I migrated to Australia in the early 1960s and even more so when she described how some of the child migrants travelled to Australia on the same ship that I travelled on with my family albeit several years apart.In spite of many dead ends, lack of documentation, lack of cooperation from the governments and charities involved, and not without great sacrifices to her own personal life, she forged ahead, determined to find an answer for the grown children involved in the Migration. In the mid 1980s Margaret Humphreys was your average social worker living about three miles away from where I’m typing this review, in West Bridgford, Nottingham.