The joys of scavenging the Thames

‘It’s very hard for you to really live in the day,’ says Ruth, ‘because you don’t know by evening you may have a letter from an agency saying you’ve got to go tomorrow.’ She arrived in the UK in 1937, aged 15, sent here by her Jewish family to escape the Nazis. Now 98, she was talking to Nikki Tapper, a presenter for BBC West Midlands, at a community centre in Birmingham, which since 2015 has committed itself to be a city of sanctuary. In The Syrians and the Kindertransport on Radio 4 (produced by George Luke), Tapper brings together two generations of refugees, divided by 70 years, who have come to the UK from very different worlds, but who share the experience of losing everything and being forced by circumstances beyond their control to settle elsewhere.

Murad arrived in the UK from Syria via Lebanon and Jordan. He knew no English and found that language was his biggest challenge.