Innocent Sinners
1958 film directed by Philip Leacock

Innocent Sinners is a 1958 British black and white film directed by Philip Leacock and starring Flora Robson, David Kossoff and Barbara Mullen. It was written by Neil Paterson and Rumer Godden based on the 1955 novel An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden.
Plot
Olivia Chesney is too ill to leave her home in a post-war London square, but waves out of her window to various neighbours. These include Lovejoy, who is a neglected young girl who finds solace in the secret garden which she creates on a bomb site. Lovejoy buys grass seed using borrowed money, and steals a net from a baby's pram to use to protect the seed growing. She also steals money from the candle box in the church in order to buy a garden fork.
Lovejoy is being looked after by the Vincents. Mr Vincent is the waiter in his own posh restaurant and is very kind to Lovejoy. Her mother is an actress away on tour, and seems to have a dubious lifestyle when she visits Lovejoy; she has "male callers" such as Colonel Baldcock who Lovejoy is asked to address as "Uncle Francis". Mr Vincent is unhappy with her lifestyle and asks her to leave.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q48672396. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958 and 1955.
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This entry incorporates text from “Innocent Sinners” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.