The battered and exhausted Britain of 1945 was desperate for workers – to rebuild, to fill the factories, to make the new NHS work. From all over the world, thousands of individuals – including many Irish emigrants – took the plunge. Most assumed they would spend just three or four years in the UK, sending much of their pay back home, but instead large numbers stayed and transformed the country. Recorded at Printworks, Dublin Castle, on 1st October 2017.

Clair Wills teaches at Princeton University in the USA. Her books include Dublin 1916: The Siege of the GPO and The Best Are Leaving: Emigration and PostWar Irish Culture.

Elaine Sisson is a cultural historian, writer, and lecturer, at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.

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