On 13th July 1940 the British government opened Hutchinson, an internment camp on the Isle of Man for so-called ‘enemy aliens’ – German, Austrian and Italian passport holders living in Britain at the time.

In the paranoia of war these men, many of whom came to Britain as refugees from Nazi oppression, were now considered to be potential collaborators with the regime from which they had fled.

Within weeks, more than twelve-hundred men had been imprisoned in the camp – one of ten on the island – which was situated behind barbed wire, in a square of boarding-houses overlooking the Irish Sea.

The refugees were imprisoned by the country in which they had staked their trust. Many had experienced a collective trauma: to be imprisoned by one’s liberator is to endure an injustice of chronology.

Through happenstance, the captives in Hutchinson Camp, or ‘P’ camp as it was known, included a concentration of renowned artists, professors, composers, writers, publishers, journalists and lawyers.

Despite the injustice of the situation, the internees quickly organised. The camp became a hub of creative endeavour, with a daily program of lectures, live music performances, poetry readings, and English lessons. 

With the support of Hutchinson’s sympathetic commandant, Captain Hubert Daniel and his wife Marjery, an amateur painter, the artists staged art exhibitions to show off work produced inside the camp.

To produce prints, they cut small pieces of linoleum from the floors, and then adjusted a laundry mangle to print linocuts. Kurt Schwitters made a mouldering sculpture out of porridge leftovers and found objects. They even produced a newspaper.