EM Forster's letters among new wartime refugee archive

Archived papers from World War Two showing how Surrey played its part in helping refugees escape persecution in Nazi Germany are to be made available to the public online.

Letters from A Room With A View author EM Forster and composer Ralph Vaughan Williams will be among those to be made available showing how refugees found shelter in Dorking after fleeing central Europe from 1938 onwards.

The papers, originally from the Dorking and District Refugee Committee, are to be digitised and made available online later this year.

Dr Beth Palmer, one of the researchers involved in the project, said: "These papers personalise and give colour to what people's lives were like in the war in Surrey."

She said: "It has been a real privilege to learn more about this.

"These stories are really profoundly moving and tell us of the large amount of care put in to support these people who were displaced from their homes."

Documents in the archive - a collaboration between the University of Surrey and Dorking Museum - include individual stories from refugees as well as from Forster and Vaughan Williams, who ran the refugee committee.

Records include those of Sir Erich Reich, who arrived in Dorking via the Kinderstransport rescue network in 1938 aged four.

Sir Erich, who later went on to become a successful entrepreneur, is also the inspiration for one of the children in the Kindertransport memorial statue outside Liverpool Street Station in London.

Other stories include those of Erika Schmidt-Landry, a former journalist who Forster and Vaughan helped after her husband was interned on the Isle of Man after the outbreak of the war in 1939.

The papers will be available in a fully searchable archive later in 2026, with materials also to be made available to local schools.

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