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

During the years of the Second World War, the Foundling Hospital became more like a prison than a children’s home. My book tells of the extraordinary happenings that took place there and the story of my mother, the unmarried daughter of an elder in the Church of Scotland who gave me up as a nine-week-old baby for fear of the shame her family would endure if she returned to the north with a child out of wedlock.

Interestingly, my story may never have found its way into mainstream publishing were it not for this blog and a Google search from a major publishing house, while researching the Foundling Hospital, which caused them to stumble on it. All power to us bloggers, I say!

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

You can order your copy here.