Ronald Fraser, the internationally renowned oral historian, turns his attention to his own origins in this remarkable memoir. In Search of a Past gathers the recollections of the servants who worked at the manor house outside London where Fraser grew up. It was the place where his parents-one American, the other Scottish-learned to embrace the lifestyle of the idle local gentry. Fraser paints a vivid picture of a vanished interwar world. Sensitively recorded, the words of his family's former employees capture the texture of English "county" life as seen from below, woven into a background of their personal lives, their work and the social antagonisms they experienced.
Beneath their stories, however, the author glimpses another unspoken narrative-that of his own childhood. He submits to a course of psychoanalysis and delves into a past riven by confusing emotions and conflicting class allegiances. The result is an innovative, honest, and beautifully written account of the search for lost time, one that defies literary categorization.
- ISBN10 0860918009
- ISBN13 9780860918004
- Publish Date 1 January 1984
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 14 May 1997
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Verso Books
- Format Paperback
- Pages 200
- Language English