Tapan Raychaudhuri grew up in an elite and prominent political family in erstwhile East Bengal – one of the most prosperous parts of the country in terms of agriculture and intelligentsia. As an eminent Indo-British historian settled in Oxford since 1973, and a witness to events for nearly eight decades now, he has offered in his memoir, The World in Our Time, deep insights into the Bengal's partition, the Great Calcutta Killings in 1946, the Bengal Famine in 1943 among others.