On Chapel Sands: My mother and other missing persons Audiobook (Free)

Summary:

Presented by Penguin.

**BBC RADIO 4 Reserve OF THE WEEK**

‘A contemporary masterpiece’ Guardian

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

In the autumn of 1929, a little child was kidnapped from a Lincolnshire beach. Five agonising times went by before she was found in a nearby community. The child kept in mind nothing of the events and no one ever spoke of these at home. It was another about On Chapel Sands: My mom and other lacking individuals fifty years before she also learned from the kidnap.

The lady became an artist and experienced a daughter, art writer Laura Cumming. Cumming grew up enthralled by her mother’s strange tales of life in a seaside hamlet from the 1930s, and of the secrets and lies perpetuated by a complete community. So many puzzles remained to be solved. Cumming began with a few criss-crossing lives in this small percentage of English coastline – the postman, the grocer, the elusive baker – but soon her search spread right out across the globe as she uncovered just how many lives were suffering from what occurred that day for the beach – including her personal.

On Chapel Sands is a publication of secret and memoir. Two narratives tell you it: the mother’s youth tale; and Cumming’s very own pursuit of the truth. Humble objects light the storyplot: a pie dish, a carved container, a vintage Vick’s jar. Characters, tickets, formula books, even this slant of the copperplate hand give vital clues. And pictures of all kinds, from paintings to photographs, start like doors to the reality. Most importantly, Cumming discovers how exactly to look more closely at the family album – with its inquisitive gaps and missing persons – getting important answers, captured in ordinary sight on the click of a shutter.

‘A moving, many-sided human story of great depth and tenderness, and a revelation of how artwork enriches life’ Sunday Instances