It’s been a lively year here on Eponymous (aka timdracup.com)

This is my 26th post: I’ve been writing the equivalent of a new post each fortnight.

Exactly half have been book reviews. There were also ten travelogues, one Dracup family history blockbuster and one bereavement-related post in memory of my late wife, Kate.

Starting with the book reviews, which mostly chart ‘the road less travelled’ in English literature, I want to highlight only three: my favourite and least favourite books of the year.

My booby prize is awarded jointly to ‘Letty Fox: Her Luck‘ (1946) by Christina Stead and ‘The Bird in the Tree‘ (1940) by Elizabeth Goudge.

My best fictional experience of 2024 was reading the four novels that together comprise ‘The Raj Quartet‘ (1966-1975) by Paul Scott.

These were justly celebrated when serialised on television in the 1980s, but seem to have fallen out of fashion. It is high time we resurrected Scott’s literary reputation.

Eight of the travelogues were walking reports, while two dealt with holidays: to Madeira in February and to Cefalu, Sicily in October. It was my second visit to Madeira and my first to Sicily.

On the walking front, we have this year:

• Completed the North Downs Way, in the company of our friend Jacqui, walking from Wye to Etchinghill in April and from Etchinghill to Dover in September.
• Begun the South Downs Way, walking from Winchester to East Meon in January and from East Meon to Cocking in March.
• Finally made further progress along the Thames Path, completing Wallingford to Pangbourne in June and Pangbourne to Henley in August. We might have got further but Autumn flooding prevented it.
• Come closer to the end of the South West Coast Path, a project begun in 2017. This year we completed Torcross to Starcross in April and Exmouth to Charmouth in June.

The blockbuster family history post, my 29th in that series, is part one of a two-part comparative study. It deals with the lives of George Dracup (1824-1896), his wife Jane (nee Bullock), his various siblings, those four of his children who chose to remain living in England and their families.

There is much to entertain, including the travails of a provincial Edwardian dancing master, a false marriage and a false identity, much petty criminality, the usual smattering of adultery and illegitimacy and a preponderance of greengrocers!

Much of the action takes place in and around Bradford, but there are also excursions to Belgium and to Coventry!

Finally, as is my custom, I wrote further about bereavement to mark #Kateday24, the seventh anniversary of my late wife’s final birthday, just nine days before she succumbed to breast cancer.

This year’s post is a philosophical analysis of how, over time, our memories of a dead partner change.

Plans are afoot for the first part of 2025.

I am already working on the second part of my comparative family history post. This will review the lives of those four of George’s children who emigrated to the United States, going on to examine what became of their families.

I want to test the hypothesis that such emigrants generally became more prosperous and tended to lead more stable and successful lives.

We plan a short break in the Southern Lake District late in February and will return to the South West Coast Path late in March. On this occasion we will be based in Weymouth and hope to walk from Charmouth to Osmington Mills.

I still want to write about music, but my initial plans were scuppered by the unwillingness of potential collaborators to help me out.

I’m still racking my brains to find an alternative, more solitary modus operandi.

Happy New Year!

TD

December 2024