Shortly after Hitler's rise to power, the couple left Germany, making their way to England via Holland. Laird's father obtained a law degree from Oxford University, then volunteered for the armed forces, which as an alien he was not required to do. Later, he joined a parachute regiment. That led to his involvement in the Battle of Arnhem, where he was killed at age twenty-four.
Laird wrote in SAAS, "Overshadowed though it was by my father's death, my childhood, like most, contained both joys and miseries, and in my case there were definitely more of the former." Devoted to her mother, a writer who published magazine articles and short stories (several of which were broadcast on BBC radio), five-year-old Christa was upset and resentful when her mother remarried. "At that time, and for several years afterwards," Laird noted, "the secret that I hated my stepfather was one I chose to share, like a sacrificial offering, with only the most special or coveted of friends." She added, "Not that my stepfather was cruel or abusive in any way; distant, certainly, and unsure how to relate to children, with other more pressing things on his mind than how to win over a resentful and probably rather self-opinionated little girl." As an adult, Laird's attitude toward her stepfather mellowed; when he died, she remembered, "I was genuinely sad."
Many of Laird's happiest childhood memories are associated with her maternal grandparents: her grandfather, as Laird described him in SAAS, "was a dear and endlessly patient man," while her grandmother "was a more irascible, indeed fiery, character." Laird's grandfather took her to the London Zoo and played cards and board games with her, while her grandmother kept a jar of sweets in a secret place in the corner of her cupboard for Christa and her younger brother Paul.
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