Michael Roberts
My elder sister Audrey’s article on cross-cultural marriages & families in England via detailed interaction with several well-educated families in Oxford in the 1990s has been reproduced in TPS in the full … https://thuppahis.com/2024/10/28/not-all-issues-are-black-or-white-some-voices-from-the-offspring-of-cross-cultural-marriages/. It has the potential to inspire comments from British folk of varied backgrounds; and, hopefully, to promote studies in the today which could mark contrasts – or similarities – now some 20-30 years later.
Audrey in an acting role at Peradeniya Uni, mid-1950s …. & at a church in Oxford in the 2010s
Here, however, my purpose is to indicate to readers Audrey’s background history and life’s journeys in ways that could generate useful thoughts among the readership, while illuminating aspects of life and times in Sri Lanka in the mid-20th century with particular emphasis on middle-class lifeways in the town of Galle.
That task has already been served in some detail in my “Vale” for Audrey when she passed away on 8 February 2018: an essay that is entitled “Audrey: her Life and Endeavours, 1 March 1934 – 8 February 2018.” while another article dwells on her range of talents
Another projected essay intends to serve up further details by focusing on our lifeways in the town of Galle and then moving on to dwell on her subsequent experiences in UK, Zimbabwe, Sudan, the Honduras and Europe.
The sweep of countries mentioned above will immediately indicate a breadth of variety that suggests an openness to difference and othering in her perspectives. To clarify this background, I plan to present other circumstantial material: an article on the recreational lifeways of our teenage circle in Galle in the 1950s.
However, here, now, let me pinpoint another major transformation in Audrey’s life world after her separation from Maxwell in the 1980s: namely, her investment in Christian lifeways in Oxford which in turn led to humanitarian endeavours in the Sudan and the British Honduras. This interest is seen in her news item on that first foray in the Sudan.
She also engaged in intellectual exchanges at Queen Elizabeth House in Oxford. In my conjecture it was the latter that brought her into the circuit involving Rosemary Breger & Rosanna Hill –the editors of the book CROSS-CULTURAL MARRIAGE (1998).
EMAIL NOTE from RexOlagesekeram in Sydney, 2 ocober 2024;
”Thank you Michael. I remember your sister Audrey at The University in Peradeniya. She was senior to me. She was then a person full of life and energy . Rex ”