A Country of Refuge at the Houses of Parliament


[Michaela Fyson, Tracy Brabin MP and Lucy Popescu]

An October excursion to a local bookshop by a pensioner and human rights activist has this week ended in MPs receiving a Christmas gift she hopes will challenge the rhetoric surrounding refugees and asylum seekers in the UK.

At the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday, Michaela Fyson from Staffordshire handed over copies – one for each MP – of A Country of Refuge, with help from the book’s editor, Lucy Popescu. The event was attended by MPs, members of the Lords, writers and refugees.

A mixture of specially commissioned fiction, memoir, poetry and essays, A Country of Refuge was created “to make a positive and vital contribution to the national debate and to foster a kinder attitude towards our fellow humans who are fleeing violence, persecution, poverty or intolerance,” Popescu said.


“There are too many politicians referring to these groups of people as if they are animals – talking about them ‘swarming’, or needing their teeth checked like horses to see how old they are. That is what we need to change.”

Sebastian Barry, one of the contributors to the anthology, whose Fragment of a Journal, Author Unknown investigates an earlier migration by people fleeing the Irish Famine, who crossed the Atlantic in “coffin ships”, said:“If we don’t honour the redemptive fact that all modern humans belong to the same family, and that therefore the children who have been abandoned in France are our children and our urgent responsibility, then there is no justice, and no human history to be proud of.”

Mirroring the book’s route to market, Fyson crowdfunded buying the 650 copies needed. “I had to get the money together in a great rush,” the 71-year-old said. “I did it through a network of people: friends and friends of friends. Some gave a few pennies others several hundreds of pounds. Everyone was incredibly generous.”

Fyson has spent her life campaigning for refugee causes after a Hungarian refugee came to live with her family in 1956. She said that MPs would be contacted after Christmas to make sure they have read the book.
Help with her task has come from unexpected sources. “When the books were delivered they arrived in a great pantechnicon in the middle of my village,” she explained. “The driver said he had to leave the pallet with all the books on it on the pavement, but when I told him what they were for, he helped get them inside. People have been so generous and supportive.”

Popescu was inspired to curate the collection two years ago after hearing the rhetoric being used to demonise refugees and asylum seekers in the media and by politicians. Her aim was to encourage compassion and empathy, she said

Though writers asked to contribute to the collection had been supportive, publishers were less enthusiastic, Popescu said. “This was before the Syrian refugee crisis, and none of the big publishers would touch it,” she added. “My agent went to every major publisher in town and everyone said that a short-story collection about refugees wouldn’t sell.”

Crowdfunding publishing house Unbound picked up the title. A second volume, focused on the experiences of refugee children, is planned for next year, Popescu added. “We want to get it onto the school curriculum and into school libraries. I am doing a call out now to children’s authors to get them involved.”

From The Guardian, Danuta Kean