Author Archives: Phyllida Scrivens

Shirley Williams foreword for biography

By Phyllida Scrivens | Mon 18th January 2016 - 3:32 pm

Shirley Williams and Joe Stirling

As a member and activist of Norwich North Liberal Democrats, I am delighted to share the news that on 5^th January, Pen and Sword Books published my debut biography Escaping Hitler: A Jewish Boy’s Quest for Freedom and His Future. The book tells the true story of Joe Stirling, Kindertransport refugee, pioneering travel agent, leading member of Lions International and past Sheriff of Norwich.

During my four years of research for this book, one afternoon Joe told me how, as a Labour Party agent for Central Norfolk, he was sent to Harwich in 1954 to help the Labour candidate, a young woman called Shirley Catlin, fight her first by-election. Later she would become Shirley Williams, Baroness of Crosby.

There is a further extraordinary link between Joe Stirling and Shirley Williams that emerged during my many hours of interviewing Joe. On escaping Nazi Germany in 1939, a Birmingham family of academics fostered him. The wife, Freda Free, had been a close friend of Vera Brittain at Oxford University, and often spoke to young Günter (Joe’s birth name) of Vera’s daughter Shirley.