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Authors R Let’s Not Forget Charles Dickens’s Other Christmas Ghost Stories! ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Keeping in step George V Martin 1995 George Martin and his brothers and sisters grew up in a Salvation Army Orphanage. External Website

Writers AUTHORS V External Website

Films/Videos The Cider House Rules (1999) 1999 The Cider House Rules (1999) is an adaptation of the eponymous book by American writer John Irving. Homer Wells (Toby McGuire) grows up in an orphanage in Maine, run by Dr. Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine). Children are treated well at the orphanage. Dr Larch trains young Homer to become an obstetrician. After Larch’s death, Homer Wells returns to the orphanage to become the new director. External Website

Authors K Colin Kaepernick ➝ Lloyd Kelly ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows Grantchester 2014 Grantchester is a British TV series starring Robson Green, Tessa Peake-Jones, and Al Weaver. A Cambridgeshire clergyman finds himself investigating a series of mysterious wrongdoings in his small village of Grantchester. In Series 3, Episode 3, a murder suspect is identified because he has 'form', ie he was in Borstal as a teenager because of stealing. However, as the show progresses it is clear this was man was not the culprit. In Series 5, Episode 3, the murder victim is a young man who was in care as a child. He is a movie enthusiast, pretending he's American and a former scriptwriter with connections in Hollywood. He is killed by a young woman who finds out he can't help her become famous. In Series 6, Episode 2, the head of a local adoption agency is killed and the ethics of adoption is questioned. Series 8 opens with the murder of a young man who was orphaned as a child and taken in by another family. This is a “cuckoo in the next” story. The series initially featured Sydney Chambers (James Norton) as the vicar. Next was William Devenport (Tom Brittney) and from Season 9, it has been Alphy Kottaram (Rishi Nair). In series 10 it is revealed (from Episode 5) that Alphy Kottaram was a foundling and was raised in the Bithah Foundling Home. The man who runs the Foundling Home – which is closing - Stuart Potts (Paul Copley) is pleased to have him back and calls him Alpheus. In that same episode, one of the children, Joshua, falls down the stairs and dies. *Spoiler Alert* - it is one of the other children in the Home who is responsible for Joshua’s death. Discussion about what happened when Alphy was born and whether he should try to locate his mother is ongoing for the rest of the series. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Murder in the Mill-Race: A Devon Mystery E.C.R. Lorac 2019 Edith Caroline Rivett Lorac was a prolific crime fiction author from the 1930s to the 1950s, and a member of the prestigious Detection Club. In this story, the body of Sister Monica who runs a children's home is found. The police think the death might not be an accidental drowning as Sister Monica was fond of abusing power. External Website

Films/Videos Without Gorky 2011 In Without Gorky (2011), the artist's granddaughter, Cosima Spender, directs her filmmaking skills to explore her own family. Ashile Gorky (1904-1948) was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, who, after his mother died of starvation, made his way to the US, changed his name and began to study art and develop his own style of abstract expressionism. The last years of Ashile's life were difficult and therefore difficult for his young wife, Agnes Magruder, who endured the man's mood swings and likekly violence. After Ashile killed himself, Agnes sent her 2 young daughters off to boarding school in Switzerland for 6 months while she traveled Europe. Natasha was only 3 and still angry with her mother 63 years later about being abandoned, such was the impact. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Boy Adeodatus Bernard Smith 1984 This is the story of a baby who was put into foster care and tells something about the beginnings of formal foster care in Australia. Bernard Smith tells of his foster mother's love for him, of maintaining connections with his birth mother, and of refusing to let him neglect his education and become a labourer. External Website

Radio & Podcast Frederick Douglas You're Dead to Me (3) A discussion about the 19th century abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, who was born enslaved but who escaped to New York and became a preacher and writer. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Born To Survive: You Can't Break A Broken heart Kylie-Anne Evans 2020 Kylie-Anne Evans writes: "My name is Kylie-Anne Evans, and it's time to tell my story as the truth will set me free. I am a survivor. I am a victim of incest. I became pregnant after rape and lost my daughter when I was 15. I suffered domestic violence. Depression stalked me. I attempted suicide. I lost people I loved to suicide, natural causes and murder. And I lost my sons. I could not look after myself, much less my children. My life was not worth living.I survived. More than that – I lived. I found resilience. I fought my way back. I overcame. And I became me – a mother with wonderful children and an amazing life." External Website

Authors E A Hidden Intersectionality: Care Experience, Disability ➝ Care Collective Zine - Issue 1.pdf ➝ Kirsty Capes | 'It’s important to have stories about the care experience that are positive' | The Bookseller ➝ Back to Top

Radio & Podcast Hamilton: the man behind the musical History Extra In the exposide, the amazing life story of Alexander Hamilton is explored, with Ron Chernow, whose biography of the American Founding Father inspired the hip-hop musical sensation. External Website

Academic Articles Rewriting the Past: Gerard Mannix Flynn's Nothing to Say and James X Victoria Connor 2016 In this article, Victoria O'Connor examines how Gerard Mannix Flynn, who is a survivor of trauma, is able to "translate the experience of trauma into language. Flynn does this in both Nothing to Say and James X, in which trauma is recalled but in doing so, the victim gains some agency over their own narrative. External Website

Television Shows Call the Midwife 2021 The pupil midwives begin their studies, including the excitable Nancy Corrigan, who has come from an orphanage/convent in Ireland where she has been living since the age 7 when her mother died. Nancy is to live at Nonnatus House; on her first day of rounds her manner unsettles a patient so much that she opts fora hospital birth instead of a home delivery. Ultimately, however, Nancy proves her skills when she must take charge of the birth when the patient is unable to make it to hospital. External Website

Writers René Descartes 1596-1650 René Descartes (1596 – 1650) was a French-born philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who spent a large portion of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army of Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange and the Stadtholder of the United Provinces. René was born into a well-off legal family, originally from the Poitou region of France. His father, Joachim Descartes, spent six months of the year 260 kilometres away in Rennes at the Parliament of Brittany and was absent from home when René was born. Rene’s mother, Jeanne Brochard, gave birth to René at her mother’s home and died fourteen months later. With his father absent for half the year, René (and his siblings), were left in the care of his maternal grandmother and wet-nurse. Biographer Desmond Clarke believes this arrangement continued for at least two years, and the children then moved between grandmother and father until Rene was four. From 1600 René then lived with the grandmother until her death around 1609, after which René spent school holidays with his godfather, Michel Ferrand, or with his paternal grandmother. Rene began his formal education at a Jesuit school, La Fleche College, 160 kilometres from home. René was at La Fleche from approximately 1607 until 1616, by which time he was 19 years old. René Descartes went on to become one of the most influential philosophers of his time; he is sometimes regarded as the “parent of modern philosophy”. External Website

Television Shows Greyzone 2018 Thriller, centring around the kidnap of a drone expert and the planning of a terrorist attached. The Swedish-Syrian terrorist in the series was in kinship care as a child External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Nicky Campbell: "There was a life long whisper: 'my mother didn't want me'" Georgia Shepheard 2021 After struggling for years to come to terms with being adopted, Long Lost Family presenter Nicky Campbell finally had a breakdown. In this article he talks about searching for his birth family. External Website

Writers George Sand 1804-1876 Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (1804 – 1876), best known by her pen name George Sand, was a French novelist, memoirist, and journalist. Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin was born in Paris and known as Aurore in her family. Her parents were Captain Maurice Francois Dupin, from an aristocratic family, and Antoinette Sophie-Victoire Delaborde, who grew up in an impoverished working-class family, was orphaned at age 14, and supported herself through sex-work. Maurice died when Aurore was 4 and his mother, Mme Dupin de Francueil, gave Aurore’s mother, Sophie, a pension to stay away while she raised the child at her Nohant estate in the south-west of France. Having read Rousseau, Mme Dupin allowed her granddaughter free reign on the country estate, while also insisting she learn ‘proper’ French. When her grandmother decided that Aurore at age 13 had become too wild, she was sent off to live in a Paris convent. Aurore’s grandmother died when Aurore was 17. 12 months later she married Casimir Dudevant. In 1831, Aurore left her husband and moved to Paris. She began publishing articles and a novel with novelist Jules Sandeau under the name Jules Sand. A year later, she published her first solo novel, Indiana, under the name George Sand. One of the more popular writers in Europe in her lifetime, being more renowned than both Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s, Sand is recognised as one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era. External Website

Authors K I felt a strange grief when I found my birth mother': Jackie Kay on The Adoption Papers ➝ Blog: Stigma and the care experience ➝ Jackie Kay on putting her adoption on stage – and getting a pay rise for her successor ➝ The Uses of Orphans ➝ Growing up in care ➝ Lemn Sissay: ‘All care stories should be successful ones’ ➝ Back to Top