Author: Tim Dracup
-
As the sixth anniversary of Kate’s death approaches – only just preceded by her 62nd Birthday on 4 July – I find myself reflecting once more on how different life would be had she lived. Would we have retired together, Devonwards, as we had vaguely planned, and would our relationship have blossomed in that new…
-
‘Excellent Women’ (1952) is probably the best-known novel by Barbara Pym (1913-1980). It deals with the humdrum middle class existence of one Mildred Lathbury, part-time charity worker and pillar of the local church. She mostly interacts with the vicar and his sister, two new neighbours and a spare anthropologist. These characters revolve around each other…
-
In May 2023, we travelled to Croatia for a Dalmatian Island Explorer holiday, arranged by Titan Travel in conjunction with Saga, its parent company. Aside from our Channel Island Hopping experience of spring 2022, this was our first journey abroad since Covid restrictions were lifted. There were some problems initially. When we first booked the…
-
William Dean Howells (1837-1920) published ‘A Hazard of New Fortunes’ in 1890. It deals with the lives of several inhabitants of New York, most of them connected in some way with the publication of a fortnightly review called Every Other Week. The owner, Dryfoos, was once a farmer but has made his fortune from natural…
-
Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923-2014) published her second novel ‘The Long View’ in 1956. It tells the story of a middle class marriage in five episodes, arranged in reverse chronological order. We first encounter heroine Antonia Fleming in 1950, when her coercive husband Conrad has become almost completely detached. We trace their story back, through infidelities,…
-
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…
-
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.…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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.…
-
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…
Eponymous 