Author: Tim Dracup
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I had originally intended that our next leg of the Thames Path would take us from Maidenhead to Staines or Shepperton, with an overnight stop en route. But, owing to time pressures, we opted instead for a day trip, arriving at Maidenhead by mid-morning and progressing to Datchet, or possibly beyond. It was a bright,…
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Donald Richard DeLillo was born in November 1936 in New York City and grew up in the Bronx’s ‘Little Italy’. He graduated from a private Catholic high school and attended nearby Fordham University, emerging in 1958 with a degree in communications. While working as an advertising copywriter he began to publish occasional short stories, leaving…
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Having spent the latter part of February 2025 at HF’s Monk Coniston country house in the Southern Lake District, we decided to repeat the experience in February 2026, this time further north. When booking in late November, we anticipated few problems, beyond the ever unpredictable Lakes weather, It was a bargain, too: we paid a…
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Six months after our last visit we returned to the South Downs Way, continuing the tradition of celebrating Tracy’s birthday on this particular trail. Despite threatened blizzards and deluges in the run-up to departure, the weather proved comparatively benign. Sun was in rather short supply, but we managed to dodge most of the showers and…
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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 7: The Illegal War with Iran, February/March 2026 I write this at the point where both parties have apparently…
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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.…
Eponymous 