ABSTRACT
We begin with a childhood from the upper classes. Unlike any of those which follow, it is essentially detached from any local setting. The family belongs to an upper-class society which is national rather than local, and follows its seasonal migrations. The parents represent two contrasting strands in the Edwardian aristocracy, each quite typical of the period: the father rather more conventionally old-fashioned, and the mother tending to withdraw from the performance of public social duties which had become less of an upper-class obligation. And the scale on which their family life was conducted was not abnormal for the time.
