10% off all books and free delivery over £40
Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.

On Chapel Sands My mother and other missing persons

View All Editions

The selected edition of this book is not available to buy right now.
Add To Wishlist
Write A Review

About

On Chapel Sands My mother and other missing persons Synopsis

Uncovering the mystery of her mother's disappearance as a child: Laura Cumming, prize-winning author and art critic, takes a closer look at her family story.

In the autumn of 1929, a small child was kidnapped from a Lincolnshire beach. Five agonising days went by before she was found in a nearby village. The child remembered nothing of these events and nobody ever spoke of them at home. It was another fifty years before she even learned of the kidnap.

The girl became an artist and had a daughter, art writer Laura Cumming. Cumming grew up enthralled by her mother's strange tales of life in a seaside hamlet of the 1930s, and of the secrets and lies perpetuated by a whole community. So many puzzles remained to be solved. Cumming began with a few criss-crossing lives in this fraction of English coast - the postman, the grocer, the elusive baker - but soon her search spread right out across the globe as she discovered just how many lives were affected by what happened that day on the beach - including her own.

On Chapel Sands is a book of mystery and memoir. Two narratives run through it: the mother's childhood tale; and Cumming's own pursuit of the truth. Humble objects light up the story: a pie dish, a carved box, an old Vick's jar. Letters, tickets, recipe books, even the particular slant of a copperplate hand give vital clues. And pictures of all kinds, from paintings to photographs, open up like doors to the truth. Above all, Cumming discovers how to look more closely at the family album - with its curious gaps and missing persons - finding crucial answers, captured in plain sight at the click of a shutter. 

About This Edition

ISBN: 9781784742478
Publication date: 4th July 2019
Author: Laura Cumming
Publisher: Chatto & Windus an imprint of Vintage Publishing
Format: Hardback
Primary Genre Biographies & Autobiographies

Press Reviews

Author

Book Awards Featuring This Book

You Might Also Like...

Behind Closed Doors

Hugo Vickers

Paperback

In Stock

£11.69 £12.99

Margot Fonteyn

Meredith Daneman

Paperback (b Format)

In Stock

£17.09 £18.99

Spare

Prince Harry

Audiobook

Available from Audiobooks.com

£22.50 £25.00

Bobby Womack Midnight Mover

Bobby Womack and 1 more

Paperback

In Stock

£9.89 £10.99