Ronald Fraser
Ronald Fraser is the leading oral historian of twentieth-century Spain. He is the author of several books, including In Hiding, In Search of a Past, Blood of Spain and Napoleon’s Cursed War.Blog
"Job snobs": the new reality of domestic labour
"Why do we spend our lives living through them?" The words of the intelligent and frustrated housemaid, Elsie, in the Robert Altman film Gosford Park, remind us of the human potential locked away in the relationship between the British aristocracy and those who served them. Chained by poverty to a social class who both despised and resented them, generations of intelligent working people had their lives moulded by the comings-and-goings of their employers, with the personal lives of both becoming dangerously and unhappily intertwined.
Raymond Carr on Ronald Fraser in the Spectator
Sir Raymond Carr, the renowned historian of Spain, has reviewed Ronald Fraser's In Search of a Past for the Spectator. While Fraser and Carr may differ somewhat in their views on the aristocracy, Carr finds the book "a compelling read."
“His tales are unfailingly readable”—Bookforum on the new edition of Ronald Fraser's In Hiding
First published in 1972, Ronald Fraser's In Hiding: The Life of Manuel Cortés was reviewed at length that same year by Arthur Miller in the New York Times. Miller fell in love with the book:
As it unfolds, modestly, factually and without pretension, one finds oneself discovering what the Spanish Civil War was really about ...
Ronald Fraser makes no overt claim to having created a novel, but it reads like one ... In the mountain of books about the war there cannot be another so brief and yet so complete, so unguarded and yet so subtle, so movingly human as this.
Books
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In Hiding
“So brief and yet so complete, so movingly human.”—Arthur Miller, New York Times
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In Search of a Past
“A remarkably honest and revealing study.”—John Fowles
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Napoleon's Cursed War
A magisterial history of “Napoleon’s Vietnam,” by the highly acclaimed historian of Spain.