I think you are probably right, but the quality of that experience is highly questionable. In order to determine if that information is valid, you still need to consult non-fiction.
It is not easy for someone growing up in a newly developed places like Hong Kong to vision what life was like for the upper class aristocrats in pre-WWII Britain was like. And reading Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time achieves precisely that.
Seriously, how do you know that? It might be accurate, and then it might not. Maybe it's a little of both, but you'll never know which is which. After all, it's all made up. Don't get me wrong, I like a good story as much as the next guy. What I object to is such questionable information going into public policy.
As I sais on the last post, it really depends on the individual authors. Anthony Powell's descriptions of the pre-war British upper classes are more credible than had the work been written by Red Ken because Powell was one of them himself.
And it also depends on whether authors had creeped his biases into the works. Angles are often unavoidable (not even in engineering) surrounding issues that can't be easily quantified. The only thing is to analyse and see if the judgment is justified or not. And this will involve background research, and perhaps a reading of some history or travelogues works of the corresponding period and/or place.
Probably having to live across from Pasco was enough to do him in.