A Son of the Rock

Jonathan Cape, 1971, 249 p. Illustrated from drawings by Pat Marriott.

Sixth in “The Wolves of Willoughby Chase” sequence, (though seventh if counting The Whispering Mountain which acts as a prequel to the series,) The Cuckoo Tree sees Dido Twite returned to England with Captain Hughes of HMS Thrush, carrying a warning to the Admiralty of a Hanoverian plot to blow up St Paul’s Cathedral during the planned coronation of Stuart King Richard IV.

Their carriage is wrecked and Captain Hughes badly injured. Did has to solicit help from a group of men she meets on the road, who point her towards Tegleaze Manor. (The men are smugglers, using canals to ferry their wares to London, a route later used by Dido.)

At the manor Dido is treated with some disdain by Lady Tegleaze but befriends her mollycoddled grandson, Sir Tobit. Lady Tegleaze allows Captain Hughes to be housed and nursed in a tenant cottage by the unlikeable and hostile Mrs Lubbage.

Dido wants to send the Captain’s dispatches to London but mistrusts the post and goes to the smugglers’ rendezvous at The Cuckoo Tree to enlist their help. There she meets orphan Cris, a slightly uncanny child who plays a part in thwarting a plan to swindle Sir Tobit out of his heritage. Mixed up in all the shenanigans is Dido’s Pa, but Dido’s presence gives him some pause.

This is all good adolescent fun, featuring adventure and mishap, locals with malapropistic speech, mind altering sweetmeats called Joobie nuts, long lost siblings etc, with authorial touches to appeal to adults; a firm of solicitors named Pickwick, FitzPickwick and Wily, the valuable family heirloom, The Tegleaze Luck-piece, a painting by P Breughel stolen in order to be sold to the Margrave of Bad Fallingoff.

However, why King Richard is portrayed as Scottish, with a Scottish accent and speech patterns is beyond me. He would certainly have been brought up as an English gentleman. (I noted this about his father here.) That his coronation takes place in St Paul’s Cathedral rather than Westminster Abbey is excused by the fact it’s an Altered History.

Pedant’s corner:- Bruegel (Brueghel, [used later],) “nobody could take if from him” (take it from him.)

Musician and legendary record producer William Orbit has died. As well as making records in his own right he worked with a multitude of artists across his career and is widely credited with reviving Madonna’s when he produced her Ray of Light album. TI am not really a fan but the two Madonna songs I regard most highly, Ray of Light and Beautiful Stranger, were both created with Orbit’s oversight.

This Orbit track, his arrangement of Samuel Barber’s composition, reached no 4 in the UK in 1999.

William Orbit: Barber’s Adagio For Strings

William Mark Wainwright (William Orbit): 15/12/1956 – 23/7/2026. So it goes.

Haworth’s War Memorial is a stone cenotaph standing just off the road at the junction of Bridgehouse Lane, Station Road, Brow Road and River View. It stop is inscribed with battle honours for France, Flanders, Gallipoli and Mesopotamia:-

From southwest:-

From east:-

The dedication and names are for the Great War only:-

Edgar Asquith – James E Holmes:-

John Holmes – Lewis Roper:-

Arthur Rushworth – Joseph Wright:-

I discovered yesterday that SF/Fantasy writer, John Crowley, has died.

I have read seven of his books, the novels The Deep, (Bantam, 1975;) Beasts, (Orbit, 1976;) Engine Summer, (Methuen, 1979;) Little, Big, (Methuen, 1981;) Ægypt, (VGSF, 1987;) Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, (William Morrow, 2005) plus the collection of novellas Novelty, (Doubleday, 1989.)

Each (in their own various ways) was a delight.

The first five of those were well before my blogging days but you can see my thoughts on Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land here and on Novelty, here.

Also on my shelves, to be read, are The Translator, (Perennial, 2002) and Four Freedoms, (Harper Perennial, 2009) and there are others I haven’t yet bought to look forward to reading.

John Crowley: 1/12/1942 – 8/8/2026. So it goes.

New signage at the entrance to Dumbarton FC Stadium, The Rock:-

Artwork by Lewis Deeney in concourse:-

Elephant and castle (as on the club badge) with trunk changing into a path –

Goal being scored with the ball turning into a sunrise over Dumbarton Rock –

New artificial pitch:-

St Michael and All Angels Church, Haworth, contains the burial vault of the Brontë family. Patrick Brontë was the perpetual curate there from 182o-1861.

A side chapel commemorates his incumbency:-

Also inside the church are three war memorials/rolls of honour to remember the men of Haworth and Stanbury who died or served in the World Wars.

Great War Memorial:-

Roll of Honour for both World Wars:-

Wooden board Roll of Honour (for those who served?)

SPFL Tier 4, The Rock,* 8/8/26.

Well; this was better. At times we looked like a football team. We even had three shots on target in the first half.

Still, every time they got up the park my heart was in my mouth.

They had several efforts during the game which squeezed past the post but I don’t actually remember Aidan Rice having a save to make until late on. However, I thought they were going to equalise when a cross begged to be buried at the back post but the guy headed it over the bar.

Like last week we also did a lot of faffing around at the back, playing the ball between the centre halves and keeper. I know the manager wants them to do this as it supposedly creates space up the park but players at our level are too prone to mistakes to make this anything but a nervy experience. It could have cost us a couple of times when they were closed down quickly but we managed to get away with it.  The ball usually ends up lumped forward anyway – or else out of play.

Throughout the first half they committed niggly foul after niggly foul but with no consequence. The first two yellows went to Sons players, captain Mike Doyle and then loanee Owen Hartington. Not until some time after we had scored did they got one.

Their keeper, Jay Hogarth, formerly of this parish, did have a great save earlyish in the second half from a Doyle header. Not long after that we got what turned out to be the winner. Leighton McIntosh tied their defence in knots and looked to have been fouled in the box but the ball rolled free to Scott Honeyman, who duly did the needful.

Thirty minutes of purgatory followed as they naturally pressed forward and we made fewer forays forward, before the ref finally blew his whistle.

Josiah Sowa was a bit more effective than last week but I wish he’d get a cross in earlier. Owen Hartington and David Craig were good in midfield too but Leighton McIntosh deserved his Man of the Match award for his tireless work.

It’s looking to be a tight league. After two games nobody has won twice and only one team has yet to gain  a point. Scary really.

*Now the stadium’s official name. Huzzah!

The Brontë Parsonage Museum contains several items of apparel relating to the Brontës.

Charlotte Brontë’s wedding dress:-

Charlotte’s wedding bonnet and veil:-

Charlotte’s cotton bodice:-

There are other items of memorabilia.

Sealing wafers and Charlotte Brontë’s writing desk:-

Charlotte on a plate:-

Brontë handwriting:-

Brontë possessions:-

Statue of the three Brontë sisters in the Parsonage garden:-

A world-wide no 1, 2 or 3 – except in North America (and Finland) – from a band with a slightly cheeky name.

Due to the recurring lyric its title is frequently misquoted as What’s Going On?

Four Non Blondes: What’s Up?

Polygon, 2025, 145 p, plus 25 p Afterword and 1 p Acknowledgements.

The sixth in Birlinn’s Darkland Tales series, this is the story of the murder in Liniclate on Benbecula of three members of his family by Angus McPhee. as told in retrospect by his brother, Malcolm who, with his sister Marion, was out gathering seaweed when the fatal events took place.

Angus had always been a reluctant worker on the family croft but had spent time on a neighbouring island and on return shown signs of mental problems. The local community had thereafter had such concerns at his behaviour that they had him examined for possible confinement in a lunatic asylum but family pride and a reluctance to pay for such provision precluded this.

Life in Liniclate, as in much of rural Scotland in 1857, was harsh, more or less hand-to-mouth. It provokes in Malcolm that dour attitude to life exemplified by Calvinism’s Scottish expression. “Hope serves only as a buttress to misery. It is better all round to accept one’s lot in life and not entertain notions of a less onerous existence.”

Malcolm also has a cynical view of human nature. “I do not suppose that many among you would have the least interest in the incidents I have thus far related were it not for the fact that they serve as a prelude to violence. When a tale promises bloodshed no one leaves their seat.”

The murders blighted Malcolm’s life. The remaining family was all but ostracised by the locals and Marion and youngest brother John left the island (though Marion wasn’t seen to board the ferry,) while Malcolm withdrew into himself. He harbours dark thoughts about the Mrs MacLeod who comes in weekly to see to his welfare and ensure he bathes every month or so. Such is the tone of his reflections that the reader wonders if Malcolm has not succumbed to madness himself and, indeed, if his account is reliable in any sense.

This is another well written addition to the Darklands series but its resemblances to Burnet’s earlier novel His Bloody Project make it seem less original than the others.

Pedant’s corner:- in the Afterword; “none of whom were married” (none of whom was married.)