Description
Book Synopsis How much do we really know about our parents’ lives? What secrets lie in plain sight? This is the true story of hidden love within a small circle of some of the most acclaimed anthropologists of the 20th century.
Told by Rosemary and Raymond Firth's son, and the daughter of Celia and Edmund Leach, the man Rosemary loved all her life, this part love-story, part biography, part social history is the tale of a highly influential circle of social anthropologists in Britain from the 1930s, through the Second World War, to the end of the century.
The book explores their early influences, their insecurities, their flaws, struggles and achievements. It is a story of passion and commitment, but also of deceit and betrayal, including the inexplicable disappearance, death and alleged murder of a very close friend. It also narrates Rosemary's struggles for emotional and intellectual independence in the face of societal expectations of women and her own guilt, loss and self-doubt.
From the Prologue:
Rosemary loved many people in many different ways, but she loved two men in particular throughout most of her life. One was her husband, Raymond Firth, regarded by some as among the founding fathers of social anthropology. Yet she also retained a passionate devotion to her first love, Edmund Leach, who would subsequently become the public intellectual face of social anthropology in the later 1960s. Both separately and together they were part of the process of defining the nature of this still growing discipline in the first part of the mid-twentieth century.
Table of Contents List of Illustrations
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Important People
Chronology
Introduction
Chapter 1. Edmund, 1928-1931
Chapter 2. I Know He Will Come Back, 1931-1932
Chapter 3. A Proposal, 1932-1934
Chapter 4. Raymond, 1934-1935
Chapter 5. By the Trickery of Cunning Fate, 1936-1938
Chapter 6. Have You Been Bombed? 1938-1940
Chapter 7. Under Attack, 1940
Chapter 8. Opened by Censor, 1941-1942
Chapter 9. One Suit and Two Blouses, 1942-1943
Chapter 10. Clogs, Cotton, Commerce and Cream, 1943
Chapter 11. Twenty Hens, Three Cats and a Fish, 1944-1949
Chapter 12. The Cost of Change, 1951-1952
Chapter 13. Goblins, 1952-1953
Chapter 14. Dancing Days and Orchid Nights, 1953-1961
Chapter 15. Bursting with Ideas, 1959-1964
Chapter 16. Scorched Earth, 1965-1966
Chapter 17. The Wheel Keeps Turning, 1967-1969
Chapter 18. Together Again, 1969
Chapter 19. Only by Change Can Things Not Die, 1970-1978
Chapter 20. The Dark Side of the Moon, 1978-1979
Chapter 21. Knowing Too Much and Too Little, 1979
Chapter 22. Pity Bolts Other Doors, 1979-1981
Chapter 23. Almost Like Brothers, 1984-1986
Chapter 24. Who was that Woman? 1986-1997
Selected Bibliography
Index
