Author: Tim Dracup
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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.
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Pirandello (1867-1936) published ‘Il Fu Mattia Pascal’ in 1904, three decades before he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. I read the 1964 translation by William Weaver. The novel was written shortly after the Pirandello family were bankrupted, causing his wife’s mental collapse. But it successfully established his literary reputation. As it begins, Mattia…
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On 4 July 2024 there is a General Election here in the UK. It would also have been Kate’s 63rd birthday, had she not succumbed to breast cancer on 13 July 2017, shortly after completing her 56th year. As is now customary, we shall walk to the place where her ashes were scattered, celebrate her…
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E. Arnot Robertson was the pseudonym of Eileen Arbuthnot Robertson (1903-1961) and ‘Cullum’ was her first novel, published in 1928. As with many other debut novels, it draws heavily on the writer’s own life. Like her heroine, Esther Sieveking, Robertson spent her childhood at Holmwood in Surrey, moving to London in 1917. Two years later,…
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This is something of a departure for me, because this novel, which was written within the last half century, remains extremely popular, and its author is still alive. Isabel Allende (b.1942) published ‘The House of the Spirits’, her first novel, in 1982. The English translation from the original Spanish appeared three years later. It takes…
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In which we finally resume the Thames Path, walking from Wallingford to Pangbourne in June 2024.
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Our adventures on the South West Coast Path in Devon, between Torcross and Starcross, in April 2024, illustrated by the best photographs we took along the way.
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Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), seen here in 1936, was an Austrian Jew. He was a hugely popular writer in the 1920s and 1930s, but then went out of style. Now he is fashionable again. ‘Impatience of the Heart’ (‘Ungeduld des Herzens’ in the original German) was first published in 1939, the English translation called ‘Beware of…
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Some five months after completing Charing to Wye, we returned for our next leg of the NDW, from Wye to Etchinghill. With a total distance of 11.2 miles, including two or three steep ascents, this was too demanding for Jacqui to complete in a single day. So we stayed overnight in Braborne, at roughly half…
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We made a rapid return to the South Downs Way, undertaking this second stage early in March 2024. We are walking in an Eastbourne direction, having started from Winchester. For the first leg, we experimented with walking over two days, on either side of an overnight stop. This obviously involves carrying fuller, heavier rucksacks than…
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This was my second trip to Madeira, but Tracy’s first. I spent a week here in November 2017, just a few months after Kate’s death. On that occasion I travelled alone, having booked with Saga (for the first time) on an all-inclusive package (also for the first time). I flew with British Airways and stayed…
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Christina Stead (1902-83) was a native Australian who lived much of her life elsewhere. She wrote this novel – often regarded as one of her best – in 1946, after spending several years in New York. It is a ‘bildungsroman’, narrated by the precocious Letty, describing her development into womanhood. Her parents are separated. She…
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We began the 100-mile South Downs Way at the end of January 2024, so adding a fourth national trail to the three already under way! The SDW stretches from Winchester to Eastbourne. Both the National Trails website and the South Downs Way website envisage it taken in this direction, from west to east. But, for…
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Cyril Connolly (1903-74) was primarily a literary critic, publishing this, his only novel, in 1936. It falls into the category of books about writing books, or researching them at least. Our anti-hero, Edgar Naylor, is partly an autobiographical study, and partly modelled on someone who later died in WW2 . He is employed as a…
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This family history post explores the life of Edmund Dracup (1858-1914), a lifelong inhabitant of Bedford, whose descendants spread the Dracup name into Kent and Gloucestershire. Edmund made a valiant effort to better himself, initially as a teacher and later by converting himself from a printer and compositor into a local journalist. He had a…
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Robert Cedric Sherriff, best known for the play ‘Journey’s End’, published this novel in 1931. It describes a fortnight’s family holiday in Bognor Regis, circa September 1930. Mr Stevens, a clerk, travels by train to the seaside, accompanied by his wife, teenage son and daughter and younger son. They stay with their usual landlady, Mrs…
Eponymous 