Innocence and Experience : Childhood and the Refugees from Nazism in Britain

«With its meticulous documentation, this multifaceted volume brings a range of individual lives and networks to the fore, outlining their inestimable contributions to British culture. It is an inspiring and timely intervention into the fields of exile and childhood studies, demonstrating just how inextricably the two are linked.»

(Professor Kiera Vaclavik, Director of the Centre for Childhood Cultures, Queen Mary, University of London)

The essays that make up this book cover a diverse range of subjects, all broadly on the theme of child refugees from Nazism in Britain. The book’s three sections – on displacement, children in art, and children in education and play – indicate the various topics considered in the study. The authors come from different academic fields – including German and Austrian exile studies, art history, language and literature, and education – so each chapter offers a depth of research as well as adding to the breadth of the overarching theme. Thus far, there has been no study dedicated to examining both the experience of these refugee children and those who worked with them, and yet they and their own children live on, marked in different ways by their experience and making their own mark in British art and literature too.