Margaret Humphreys Talks Oranges and Sunshine

Having one of the defining events of your life adapted into a major motion picture while you’re still alive (and working on those same issues) is weird, discombobulating stuff. Such is the case, though, for Nottingham social worker Margaret Humphreys, whose work in uncovering the forced deportation of thousands of British children is the basis for the new film Oranges and Sunshine, starring Emily Watson and directed by Jim Loach. Almost single-handedly, Humphreys brought authorities to account and drew worldwide attention to an extraordinary (and extraordinarily recent) miscarriage of justice, in which disadvantaged children as young as four years old were told that their parents were dead, and then sent to children’s homes in Australia, where many suffered appalling abuse. I recently had the chance to speak with Humphreys one-on-one, and the conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa.