Clare Mulley - The Woman Who Saved The Children

Clare Mulley returns to Lavenham with The Woman Who Saved the Children.

One hundred years ago, Eglantyne Jebb was arrested in Trafalgar Square for distributing humanitarian leaflets. It was 1919 and few in London were sympathetic to a woman hoping to help the children of Britain’s former enemies. Yet within weeks the audacious Jebb secured the first donation to her “Save the Children” fund from the public prosecutor at her trial. She later drafted the pioneering statement of children’s human rights that has since evolved into the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most universally accepted human rights instrument in history. Yet Eglantyne was never particularly fond of individual children, “the little wretches” as she once called them. The Woman Who Saved the Children won the Daily Mail Biographers Club Prize, and all author royalties are donated to the charity.