Childhood in India

George Roche was born in India in 1915 at Manmad in the district of Nasik, Maharashtra. His father, an officer in the Royal Engineers, after war service in East Africa, was responsible for the maintenance of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. For the first 12 years of his life, George regarded India as home, far from ‘that grey place’, England. Like most children of the Raj, he was sent to boarding school in England, an experience he prefers to forget. After the death of his mother from smallpox in 1927, the family went to England.Roche studied at London University. War Service, interrupting his studies in civil engineering, took him to India, the Western Desert (where he was mentioned in despatches for great bravery), Palestine, Iraq and Italy. After war service, he took a degree in plant ecology. George possessed remarkable linguistic skill and his career took him to Nigeria, Malaya, Pakistan, Borneo and Zambia. After such an adventurous life George looks back on his Indian childhood, shared with his younger brother and sister. This charming memoir retrieves memories shared with a whole generation of Indian and British individuals, contributing to archives to be valued by generations ahead