I became interested in exploring recent family history after I found a huge collection of letters in a tin box which revealed a passionate relationship between my parents and evidence of 10 years of separation, loss, joy and pain. The letters also showed how people of a certain class lived in Colonial times.

 

Another batch of objects and papers turned out to be my father's war diary which he kept for three years during the war whilst he served in India and Burma, a period about which I was  fairly ignorant. After much research I managed to discover what had happened to him after his diary ends.

 

I was lucky to have been able to revisit many of the places my parents visited and to track down marriage, birth and death certificates in unlikely corners of the globe. I have also been in contact with relatives of Ray's colleagues in the army and have shared information whenever possible.

 

I suspect that this was the last generation to have kept such rigorous records of their personal lives and opinions. Being a witness to a relationship has been a privilege and reading the letters clarified much about my own past history. The discovery of the traumas undergone in WW2 was also a revelation.

 

I would encourage readers to look at their own past and explore the more recent life histories and records as far as possible for the future.