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On Chapel Sands
- My Mother and Other Missing Persons
- Narrated by: Laura Cumming
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
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On Chapel Sands
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Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
BBC Radio 4 book of the week.
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 50 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.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Critic reviews
"A modern masterpiece." (Guardian)
"A moving, many-sided human story of great depth and tenderness, and a revelation of how art enriches life." (Sunday Times)
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What listeners say about On Chapel Sands
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- B O’Sullivan
- 06-09-19
A heartfelt real story
Tender, colourful and descriptive. I would recommend it to all my friends who are interested in family history.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- JT CULLUM
- 10-09-19
Beautiful
Moving, beautifully written and read.
An insight into a different time. Listened to it all in a few days
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Ms J Worrall
- 30-09-19
Evocative and touching
A beautifully written and read exploration of the effect of the mores of times past on the intimate story of a family in a small Lincolnshire village and the lasting legacy of a fateful decision. Evocative, deeply touching and as absorbing as a detective story.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Julie D Kirk
- 05-06-23
Beautifully written story!
Beautifully written and perfectly narrated. I enjoyed this book very much. Was recommended to me by my newly discovered cousins whom I was visiting for the first time in Chapel St. Leonards!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Kim N.
- 07-02-21
Heartfelt prose read by a melodic voice...
Beautifully narrated with wonderful reference to visual imagery...a heartfelt account which reads like a melody!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 11-08-23
Narrated with feeling
In ways this heartfelt family history is like a forensic detective story, but containing beautiful prose plus insightful analysis of paintings which I now need to find...
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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- Rachel Redford
- 01-09-19
Lost and found
I'm afraid that I found Laura Cumming's narration of her own work spoiled 'On Chapel Sands' for me. I can totally understand why she is intensely emotionally involved in the very complex net of her family's lies which caused so much pain to so many members of her family. BUT her acknowledgements which she reads at the end of the recording shows that she has a reasonably vigorous speaking voice. She has chosen to read 'On Chapel Sands' in an ultra-gentle, super-soft-reverential tone overflowing with compassion which after a fairly short time I found irritating and monotonous. The poignancy of the family story can speak for itself (as it would when reading) and this unstinting injection of sickly gentleness very quickly palled..
Cumming's mother's family saga which she has so scrupulously researched and pieced together is fascinating: the kidnap of her 3 year-old mother and the ignorance of the child's parentage in which she was raised is just the start. Cumming presents a myriad of plaited stories of changed names, an apparently mean and bad-tempered 'father'; her mother's escape from the Post Office to art school; a strange old woman claiming to be her grandmother - and many more twists and turns, visions and revisions. How sad it is to reflect on the legacy of human misery caused by the shame and lies surrounding one illegitimate birth which today would have passed unremarked!
Giving all this complex narrative depth is Cumming's wanderings into the world of art which has shaped her (she is The Observer art critic) - particularly Bruegel's 'Landscape with the fall of Icarus' which encapsulates the human silence surrounding the trauma of the fall of Icarus with its parallels to the fate of Cumming's mother as a child. The paintings - from Ravilious to Fra Angelico are an added dimension to all the human insight.
A haunting story beautifully told - but it needs a different narrator!
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18 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- P. Palmer
- 21-06-22
Beautiful book. Deeply moving.
What a tender account of a flawed family and the complexities of pre-war affairs, strained marriages and local loyalties. Beautifully written and poetic. So much love and respect and deep thought about the deep bonds and ties of family. A bonus that it was read by the author. It felt almost like a private conversation.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Sarah Phelps
- 21-11-22
Stunning and so moving
Highly recommend this book, so complex and layered about the secret histories of parents. Compassionate, gripping, humane. I absolutely loved it.
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- lyne eden
- 28-04-20
This book is unputdownable!!!
I love this book. I could not stop listening.. and the final moments had me in tears.. I love the story, woven through with art.. beautifully told. It’s an absolute must listen too.
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1 person found this helpful