‘Sea Air’ – Some Tales of Internment
Sonia Lambert follows the experiences of a group of four Jewish refugees to Britain in 1940 ─ stories which inspired both her historical novel Sea Air and her PhD. These men could be described as the unluckiest (or perhaps the luckiest) group of internees. They were held in British camps before being deported by ship in 1940, and survived the sinking of the SS Arandora Star, only to be deported again on the infamous HMT Dunera, to a camp in Australia. Lambert reads extracts from Sea Air, discusses the sources she used in her research and talks about the ways in which the experiences of the internees resonate today.
Sonia Lambert’s first novel Three Mothers was published by Piatkus in 2008, and she has written for BBC Radio 4 and The Guardian. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, and a PhD from Goldsmiths University of London. She currently works at the Refugee Council.
Author: Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies
Speaker(s): Sonia Lambert (London); Chair: Jana Buresova (Research Centre for German & Austrian Exile Studies, IMLR). Contributing to the discussion: Naomi Levy; Anna Nyburg; Steven Gauge; Dave Carson
Organisations: Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies
Event date: Wednesday, 23 March 2022 - 6:00pm