To unlock the secrets of that photograph is the matter of Cumming’s book. This photograph, too, is fraught with mystery: it shows George on a beach, holding the very young Grace, before she became Betty before she became his daughter. He is a rare, sombre presence in the family album but in a single photograph he is smiling. As an adult, she called herself Elizabeth.This shifting sense of her own identity, as mutable as the vast, flat expanses of the Lincolnshire coast where she grew up, is partly anchored by a series of photographs of her as a child: she is always smiling, and usually alone, apart from the unseen presence of the photographer, her father, George. Her new parents renamed her Betty - a name she came to detest. She was christened Grace, and aged three she passed into the care of George and Veda Elston, who lived in the nearby village of Chapel St Leonards. At its heart is a deeply loved little girl, who grew into a self-deprecating artist, wife and mother. No father’s name was given on her birth certificate. Thoughtful, honest and beautifully written, On Chapel Sands is an unvarnished portrait of English village life in the first half of the 20th century, revealing the tides of shame and pride, stoicism and love, that washed through it down the years. She was born in a Lincolnshire village on August 8, 1926. New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENTįew of us can recall our lives before the age of three but for Cumming’s mother the facts were effaced rather than illuminated.
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