Author: Tim Dracup
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Romain Gary (1914-1980) was born Roman Leibovich Kacew in Vilnius, then part of the Russian Empire. His parents, both Jewish, divorced in 1925. After periods in Moscow and Warsaw, he and his mother arrived in Nice. He studied law before joining the French Air Force in 1938, training as a pilot. Following the French Armistice…
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An occasional scrapbook, wherein I shall collect and reflect on some of the more egregious abuses of this appalling United States Government. The entries are in reverse order, so the newest are at the top. Exhibit 6: The letter to the Finnish Prime Minister: January 2026 This is the authentic text of a letter sent…
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If last year was lively on Eponymous (aka timdracup.com), 2025 has been positively manic. In 2024, I published 26 posts and thought that was good going. But this is my 41st post of 2025. That includes 15 book reviews, 12 musical posts in my Ouroboros series, five posts devoted to our progress along various English…
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Paul Thomas Mann (1875-1955) was born in Lübeck, Germany. His father was a wealthy Lutheran grain merchant; his mother, a Brazilian-born Roman Catholic with German and Portuguese ancestry. When his father died in 1891, the family moved to Munich, where Mann lived until 1933. In 1905 he married Katia Pringsheim, daughter of a Jewish mathematician…
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We come full circle with this 12th and final post in my Ouroboros series, each exploring a piece of music that is personally important to me. Last time round I gave the game away, explaining that I’d been unable to choose a single composition by Franco et le TPOK Jazz. There had to be at…
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Here is the penultimate post in this series of twelve, each exploring a musical composition with particular personal significance. Each choice is connected in some way with its immediate predecessor. My final selection will connect with the first. I haven’t pre-planned the steps in this sequence, so they partly reflect my preferences and predilections when…
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This is the second instalment of a two-part study examining the family history of four Dracup siblings who emigrated to the United States. It complements a parallel study exploring the family history of four more siblings who chose to stay in England. All eight were the children of George Dracup (1824-96) and his wife Jane,…
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This extended family history post is a companion piece to George Dracup (1824-1896) and his English descendants (September 2024). The George Dracup in question and his wife, Jane, nee Bullock (1824-1886) may have had up to twelve children, but only eight definitely reached adulthood. Of those, four sons opted to remain in England, while four…
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It’s high time for the tenth study in my Ouroboros cycle. This series will ultimately explore twelve pieces of music that are important to me, the twelfth and final choice linking back to the first. Indeed, each piece of music must link in some way with its immediate predecessor, but I haven’t planned the cycle…
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John Maxwell Coetzee was born in 1940 in Cape Town, South Africa. He attended a Catholic school and then the University of Cape Town. After three years working as a computer programmer in England, he completed a PhD on Samuel Beckett at the University of Texas, Austin, then spent a further three years teaching English…
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Our choice of holiday in Autumn 2025 fell to me. I was seeking a happy medium, roughly midway between our full-on, energy-sapping experience in the Swiss Alps and last year’s ‘rest and relaxation’ experiment in Cefalu, Sicily. Eventually I decided on a Saga holiday, Walking in Gran Canaria, a week long, departing in early October.…
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William Trevor Cox (1928-2016) disposed of his surname for writing purposes. He was born in County Cork, Ireland, to James Cox, a bank manager, and Gertrude, nee Davison, originally from Ulster. They were a Protestant family. It was not a particularly happy childhood and, owing to his father’s postings, Trevor spent it in several different…
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Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) was born in rural Minnesota, the youngest child of a doctor. When he was six, his mother died and his father remarried. Lewis attended Yale, graduating in 1908, after which he worked as editor for a variety of newspapers and publishers. His first serious novel appeared in 1914 but success eluded…
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Ninth in my ‘not-planned-in-advance’ cycle, codenamed Ouroboros, in which I’m exploring twelve pieces of music that hold personal significance. This one is really a dark horse (no pun intended). It has never featured at the top of my playlists of personal favourites, and it has little in common with other selections in this sequence. Though,…
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We returned to complete the Coast Path in September 2025, basing ourselves in Swanage. This nineteenth and final visit marked the end of a project begun in Minehead in October 2017, almost eight years earlier. Pre-Covid, we would travel down for up to five days at a time but, since our ninth visit (Port Isaac…
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Eighth in my Ouroboros series, about pieces of music I particularly value. This time round it’s ‘Black Diamond Bay’, from Bob Dylan’s 1975 album ‘Desire’.
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Louis Auchincloss (1917-2010) was born into a privileged family of businessmen, lawyers and stockbrokers. Though, according to him, the Auchincloss menfolk owed their wealth, not to inheritance, but to advantageous marriages and their personal acumen. He studied at Yale but, midway through his degree, transferred to read law at the University of Virginia, eventually graduating…
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We’ve reached the seventh in this sequence of twelve posts, each exploring a musical composition with particular personal significance. Each musical choice is linked in some fashion with its immediate predecessor. I hope to end in December (or thereabouts) with a piece of music that has some sort of connection with my first selection, back…
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Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) was born Penelope Knox, her parents being Edward Knox, a poet and later Editor of ‘Punch’ and Christina, nee Hicks, daughter of the Bishop of Lincoln. She graduated from Somerville College, Oxford in 1938, and in 1942 married Desmond Fitzgerald, a barrister. Ten years later he was caught forging signatures on cheques…
Eponymous 