John was born in April 1929 and went first to the Foundling Hospital School in Redhill and the next year, moved with the rest of the children to the new school at Berkhamsted. He joined the army on leaving school and then went into bookmaking. He now lives in Surrey with his wife.
The thing-- the abiding memory is that one day, our our dormitory was upstairs, a big dormitory with over 30 children in and there was two lines on the outside and lines in the middle and I remember standing there and looking out the window and seeing a train go by. And I stood there and I thought ' Now I'm all alone. It's me against the world'. And that's the first time I ever thought, you know, that I was somewhere different, like, that, you know, that I was in a school, I wasn't with my foster parents. That there was just....that I was on my own..[long silence]”
