In Search of a Past

Ronald Fraser is an internationally renowned chronicler of other people's experience. "In Search of a Past" is his remarkable account of his own origins. Born in Hamburg in 1930, he settled in the Home Counties at three years of age with his wealthy American mother and Scots father to enter the life of the energetically idle rich. Their new existence centered on fox-hunting, shooting and entertaining. Gathering the memories of the servants who worked at the Manor House during his childhood, the author first recreates a vivid picture of a vanished interwar world. Sensitively recorded, their words portray the texture of county life as seen from below - woven into a background of their personal lives, their work and the social antagonisms they experienced.