“The past was another country”

“The past was another country” captures Lucas’s sharp divide between his American reinvention and the life he left behind. In the scrapbook Barbara made while she could still recognize faces and write, a photograph shows him clean-shaven and preppy, raising a bottle of Budweiser; across it, he has written “Living the dream.” The image records the ease with which he remade himself, while the phrase about the past marks the distance he puts between that identity and home.

The Phrase in Context

Lucas recalls being happy in New York, where reinvention came easily. His posh English accent and resemblance to Prince Andrew helped shape the image of himself presented in the scrapbook photograph. Against that buoyant American self-portrait, he describes the past as cold, grey, miserable, and persistently rainy. The contrast makes the phrase more than a general reflection on time: it expresses his preference for a new identity over the place and history associated with bitterness and sadness.

Distance from Home

Lucas returns infrequently, asking himself why he would go back to a place that makes him feel bitter and sad. Instead, Barbara and his father visit the United States separately once or twice a year. Barbara takes readily to New York’s shopping, theatre, and dining, contrasting Regent Street and Liberty’s with Fifth Avenue. The family’s travel makes the separation concrete: Lucas’s life is now oriented toward America, while home remains a painful past he would rather keep at a distance.