The Last Foundling (Pan Macmillan) tells the story of a young boy growing up in Britain’s first and last institutional children’s home, the Foundling Hospital, which embarked on its pioneering work in 1739. Exactly two centuries later, I joined the hospital as an illegitimate child when my mother found herself unable to cope in a London about to be plunged into war.

During the years of the Second World War, the Foundling Hospital became more akin to a prison than a children’s home. My book recounts the extraordinary events that transpired there and the story of my mother, the unmarried daughter of an elder in the Church of Scotland. She gave me up as a nine-week-old baby, fearing the shame her family would face if she returned to the north with a child born out of wedlock.

Interestingly, my story might never have entered mainstream publishing if not for this blog and a Google search by a major publishing house researching the Foundling Hospital and subsequently stumbling upon it. All power to us bloggers, I say!

The Last Foundling was released on 13 March 2014 and has been featured on BBC Radio, as well as in several national newspapers, including The Guardian, The Daily Mail, and The Daily Mirror. It has also become an international bestseller in Canada and is listed as required reading in a humanities course at one of the world’s leading universities, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

You can order your copy here.