A repeat episode of The Repair Shop broadcast on Wednesday, 11 November, reduced a guest to tears after bookbinder Chris Shaw restored a battered family Bible that had survived a Japanese internment camp in wartime Shanghai.
The Bible belonged to Florence, the grandmother of guest Judy, who was imprisoned with her three children in the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Centre for more than four years during the Second World War. Judy attended the BBC workshop with her daughter Laura, hoping the century-old book could be saved from the damage inflicted by the camp's damp and heat.
A Bible that carried a family through internment
As Laura explained on the programme, Florence was born in China to an Irish father and a Chinese mother, and later married an Englishman who died just weeks after the birth of their son. Widowed in her early thirties with three children, she faced further catastrophe when Japan invaded China and the family, classified as British, was interned at Lunghua.
Judy described the conditions inside the camp with unsparing detail.
They were all crammed in, it was hot, little food. They were having very watered down rice with added maggots. Then my grandmother caught TB and she was taken out of camp to a hospital, and they were on their own in camp for about 18 months without their mum.
The three children, then aged 17, 15 and 10, found comfort in the Bible throughout their captivity. They were liberated when the war ended and reunited with their mother, whose health had survived tuberculosis.
What the restoration revealed
According to Express reporting on the episode, Shaw described the family's history as terrible as he set about repairing the water-damaged volume, which was more than 100 years old. When the restoration was complete, Judy was overcome.
Is that the same one? It's amazing... this is how it would have looked.
She said the Bible represented her mother and grandmother's legacy, and what they went through: their strength and endurance. She also reflected on what the object meant to her relatives inside the camp, giving comfort when conditions were at their worst.
We've got it back in one piece that we can hold, it's a lesson that not all is lost.
Memory, trauma and the objects that carry them
The emotional force of the episode lies in how it connects private objects to public history. Judy recalled that her mother never fully left the camp behind, filling a walk-in larder floor to ceiling with tinned food when Judy was a child, determined she would never starve again if war broke out.
Laura added that her grandmother insisted childhoods should be fun and lighthearted, because she felt robbed of her own. That mixture of resilience and grief is what the restored Bible now holds, a domestic object bearing witness to an atrocity that shaped a family across generations.
The programme has a record of such moments. In recent weeks, according to The Mirror, Shaw and woodworker Will Kirk restored a Victorian writing box belonging to a pioneering journalist, while Belfast Live reported on a restoration honouring an Irish trailblazer that left guests in tears over a handmade name plaque.
Why this matters beyond the workshop
The Repair Shop's appeal is often described as consoling television, and so it is. But episodes like this one perform a quieter civic function. The Lunghua Civilian Assembly Centre, where Florence's family was held, is one of the less familiar chapters of the Second World War, far from the narratives usually taught in British schools. When a prime-time BBC programme devotes its platform to that history, and to the Chinese-Irish-English family at its centre, it does something valuable: it widens the national memory.
It is also a reminder, at a moment when nativist rhetoric is once again in fashion, that British history has always been entangled with the world, and that British identity has been claimed by families of every mixture and origin. Florence's grandchildren hold a Bible, and a story, that belongs in that shared record.
The episode is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
Frequently asked questions
What happened to Florence's family in the Second World War?
Florence and her three children were interned by Japanese forces at the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Centre in Shanghai for more than four years, classified as British, according to the episode broadcast on 11 November.
Who restored the Bible on The Repair Shop?
Bookbinder Chris Shaw restored the Bible, which was over 100 years old and had been damaged by the damp conditions of the camp.
When was the episode aired?
The BBC aired the episode, a repeat of one first shown in October 2025, on Wednesday, 11 November.