I first heard of Philomena Lee at a New Year’s party in 2004, when her daughter Jane approached me to ask for help. She told me her mother had just revealed a shocking secret – that she, Jane, had a long-lost brother. Could I, a former journalist, find out more?
Philomena
had fallen pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952 when such things
were considered shameful and had been sent to Sean Ross Abbey, a convent
in Roscrea, County Tipperary, to give birth as a ‘fallen woman’.