hold out against admitting refugees”. She also wanted Britain to withdraw from the 1951 refugee convention.

All of this went largely unnoticed by those rescued by the Wellpark as they sought to map out a future in a strange land. Quan’s father applied to emigrate to the US, but then the mayor of Peterborough turned up at the barracks offering homes to 10 families on a new estate. Three months later Quan moved north. Then came school, English lessons and cultural adjustments.

“I remember going down the corridor with one of the girls, chattering away in Cantonese. The deputy head – I was petrified of her – stopped us and said: ‘No, no, no, you should be speaking English in school.’ My dad found a job at a textile companyfew weeks of arriving at Kensington barracks, Hung Nguyen landed a job with a project distributing second-hand books to developing countries. It was run by Lady Ranfurly, later famed for her extraordinary wartime diaries, To War With Whitaker. She offered to help Hung resume his medical studies. “She was an older lady,” he said, “Classy. I was cocky. I turned it down because I wanted to do it on my own.”

The British Council for Refugees gave Hung a scholarship to study English in Saffron Walden. In the holidays he went on a trip with his mother to visit relatives in America. They encouraged him to apply for medical school there and he was accepted. “So I stayed,” he said. “I became a foreign student from England,” he added,