Author: Tim Dracup
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Our progress along the North Downs Way continues, albeit slowly. We resumed towards the end of April 2023, some six months after completing the previous stretch, from Cuxton to Sandling. Sandling is some miles before the official end of the Cuxton to Detling leg, and we had needed a 101 Sapphire bus to connect us…
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I intended my next book to be Maurice Baring’s ‘Cat’s Cradle’, but soon discovered that I’d read it already! So I switched to ‘Marcella’ by Mrs Humphry Ward, aka Mary Augusta Ward. This is her. Previously I’d read only her ‘Robert Elsmere’, which I very much enjoyed. ‘Marcella’ was written six years later, in 1894.…
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As you can see from the cover, William Boyd (no less) rates ‘The Polyglots’ (1925) as: “The most influential English novel of the Twentieth Century.” I would be inclined to award that prize to ‘Ulysses’, perhaps, or else ‘To the Lighthouse’. Those are both great literary masterpieces, while this, emphatically, is not. The narrative, such…
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This is Mary Cholmondeley (1859-1925) whose novel ‘Red Pottage’ (1899) is, in my opinion, a neglected classic. It tells the story of two very different female friends, Rachel West and Hester Gresley. The main plot revolves around the consequences of adultery: at the husband’s behest, he and his rival draw lots. The loser is honour…
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Storm Jameson published these three novellas in the early 1930s – and they are heavily redolent of that period. Each examines the life of a woman who struggles to overcome her circumstances: First, a novelist, increasingly overshadowed by her less talented but more charismatic, beautiful (and promiscuous) childhood friend. Second, a wealthy heiress who, escaping…
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Here’s my latest report from some of the less frequented avenues of literature. Boleslaw Prus was the pen name of Polish author Alexsander Glowacki (1847-1912). He first published ‘Lalka’ (‘The Doll’) in serialised form between 1887 and 1889. It is panoramic and ambitious, reflecting the development – and arguably the decay – of Polish society…
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This is Elizabeth Drew Stoddard (1823-1902). She published her first novel ‘The Morgesons’ in 1862. We follow the development of heroine, Cassandra Morgeson, and her unworldly sister Veronica. Cassandra develops a taste for the wrong kind of man, falling in love with her married cousin Charles. After he dies when their carriage overturns, she becomes…
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The final week of March saw our first visit to the Coast Path in 2023. We were returning to Par, our endpoint last time, hoping to see its better side. This was a wet week in a very wet month. While dodging the rain as much as possible, our minimum target was to reach the…
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Leonard’s story is a particularly sad one. It reflects several prominent themes in wider Dracup family history, including musicality, migration and mental health. Leonard was the third of four children. After an apparently uneventful childhood, he joined the Australian Navy at the tender age of 17. But, within a few years, he found himself marooned…
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It took four months for us to return to Cuxton, this time to attempt the majority of the leg from there to Detling, some 12.5 miles distant. I knew we would be unable to complete the full distance, especially since we had a further mile from Cuxton Station to the beginning of the walk proper.…
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In September we made it a hat-trick of Coast Path visits during 2022. This time we began at Helford Passage, on the opposite side of the Helford ferry crossing from where we’d left off in June, and finished beside the industrial wasteland abutting Par Docks. Our base on this occasion was the splendid harbour town…
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Since we arrived in Oxford in the first week of August 2021, it has taken us just over a year to return to the Thames Path. On this occasion we based ourselves in Abingdon, travelling out on Wednesday and returning on Saturday. On the Thursday we walked the nine miles or so from Oxford to…
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This post is about the descendants of William Dracup (1832-1910), principally his son Arthur Dracup (1872-1962) and his grandson Norman Dracup (1905-1944). It describes part of the Dracup family that established itself in the district of Shipley, a few miles to the north of Bradford, initially in the model village of Saltaire towards the north…
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Back in 2017, when my wife Kate died, I went through probate for the first time. It was a complex and extended process I navigated only with some difficulty. So, following my mother’s death in January 2022, I was delighted to learn that a far simpler online system had been introduced. There seemed no obstacle…
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By mid-June of 2022 we were already back in Cornwall, having completed St Ives to Marazion only three months beforehand. We devoted our week to the Lizard Peninsula, restarting at Marazion, continuing down the western side and rounding Lizard Point before ascending the eastern side to reach the Helford Estuary. Our base was a small…
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Monday 4 July 2022 would have been Kate’s 61st Birthday. And Wednesday 13 July 2022 will be the fifth anniversary of her untimely death from breast cancer, at the Princess Alice Hospice, Esher, in the summer of 2017. As the years pass by, increasingly I prefer to commemorate and celebrate her birthday, allowing her death…
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Six weeks after reaching Wrotham, we were back at Borough Green Station, ready to walk the eleven miles or so to Cuxton. We had travelled via Clapham Junction and London Victoria, catching the Ramsgate train, which reached Cuxton shortly after 10AM. It was a Saturday in mid-May and perfect for walking. There were blue skies…
Eponymous 