Author: Tim Dracup
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After a seven month hiatus, we returned to the South Downs Way at the end of January 2025, our trip timed to coincide with Tracy’s Birthday. We’d been scanning local weather forecasts for several days, fearing more high winds and driving rain, given the series of winter storms that had been battering Britain. All my…
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This is John Meade Falkner (1858-1932), best known as the author of Moonfleet (1898), a riproaring tale of smuggling and derring-do. I remember it being read to us in primary school. Sometimes, when he was tired, Mr Smith, bespectacled and ginger-bearded, would ask me to take his place, reading aloud to the class. It was…
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This is the first in a series of experimental posts about pieces of music that are personally important to me. I’ve wanted to write about music for a long time. Not as a musician (because I’m not one) but as a discerning listener, endlessly fascinated by the evolving soundtrack of his life. I’m not up…
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Emily Hilda Young (1880-1949) enjoyed an unconventional life. She married a solicitor, John Arthur Daniell, settling in Clifton, Bristol. But she also began a lifelong affair with Ralph Bushill Henderson, a married teacher, theologian and fellow mountaineer. Henderson had married Beatrice Mansfield in 1901. Although well into his 40s, Daniell served as a Sergeant Instructor…
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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…
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We thought it was time to take a ‘proper’ holiday – a week devoted primarily to rest and relaxation. We wanted to discover if we could still relax sufficiently to enjoy such an experience, or whether we would be ground down by monotony and boredom. We booked our week in Cefalu through First Choice Holidays.…
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Paul Scott (1920-1978) won the Booker Prize shortly before his death and acquired posthumous fame when the ‘Raj Quartet’ – his tetralogy of novels about the final years of British rule in India – was televised in 1984. The first in the sequence is ‘The Jewel in the Crown’ (1966), which gave its name to…
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Despite half a century’s engagement with literature, Hermann Broch (1886-1951) was completely new to me. Between 1931 and 1932 he published a trilogy of self-contained novels, collectively called ‘The Sleepwalkers’. Together they span a period of thirty years, set in 1888, 1903 and 1918 respectively. Each is intended to capture the zeitgeist: in 1888 this…
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In September 2024 we returned to Kent to complete the North Downs Way, having reached Etchinghill the preceding April. This final leg is relatively demanding and feature-packed, some 12 miles in length. We decided to split it into two roughly equal sections, to reflect Jacqui’s fitness level and increase our collective enjoyment of this final…
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Dorothy Canfield (1879-1958) published ‘Her Son’s Wife’ in 1926. It is set in Gilmanville, a fictional place in small-town America, between 1908 and 1925. The ‘her’ in question is Mary Bascombe, a middle-aged widow. Though a determined, highly capable teacher and mother, she seems incapable of understanding or forgiving weakness in others. Her son, Ralph,…
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This Dracup family history post, the 29th in the series, surveys three generations of Dracups. It deals with the lives and experiences of George Dracup (1824-1896) and his wife Jane, nee Bullock (1824-1886), their siblings, children and grandchildren. This will be the first of two linked posts. In this part, I look first at George…
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Jean Stafford (1915-1979), though better known as a short story writer, also published three novels. Her second, ‘The Mountain Lion’ appeared in 1947, not long before the collapse of her first, unhappily tempestuous marriage with the poet Robert Lowell (1917-1977). Stafford herself had been born in Covina, California, the youngest of four children, later moving…
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Well, this is a thoroughly nasty little novel, and no mistake! Elizabeth Goudge (1900-1984) published ‘The Bird in the Tree’ in 1940. It is the first part of a trilogy, the companion volumes written in 1948 and 1953 respectively. Goudge was born into a wealthy academic-religious family and never married, living with her mother after…
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During the dog days of August 2024, we decided spontaneously to walk another stretch of the Thames Path, having completed Wallingford to Pangbourne in June. This time we made a two-day trip with an overnight stop at Sonning. The total distance should have been some 15.6 miles, but an extensive 2.7 mile off-river diversion between…
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Fyodor Sologub was the pseudonym of F K Teternikov (1863-1927), a poet and novelist, part of the Russian Symbolist movement. Here he is, circa 1910, posing alongside his wife, Anna Chebotarevskaya. He began writing ‘The Petty Demon’ in the 1890s, but couldn’t get it published until 1907. Sologub draws heavily on his own personal experience.…
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Flora MacDonald Mayor (1872-1932) is best known for ‘The Rector’s Daughter’ (1924), often cited as a neglected masterpiece. ‘The Squire’s Daughter’ (1929) is not quite in that league – is perhaps more of a curate’s egg. It deals with the ‘generation gap’, as it manifested a century ago, between two generations of the De Lacey…
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Our latest adventures on the South West Coast Path, in June 2024, walking from Exmouth to Charmouth.
Eponymous 