That is to say that, even at the age of 60, a lot of people knew who she was and she still didn’t. “They thought my mother would know perfectly well who they were, because they knew perfectly well who she was. “My mother had an extraordinary communication from two people writing to her and failing to say who they were,” Cumming recalls. Her daughter, Laura Cumming, now the chief art critic for The Observer, has investigated the event, drawing on family photographs, first hand conversation, and her professional skills, to solve the mystery and reveal the untold history of her family. Betty had no memory of the incident and only learned of it in 1986, when she received an unexpected letter. From there she was taken, when Veda’s attention was elsewhere.įive days later, Betty was found unharmed in nearby Hogsthorpe. Betty Elston, aged 3, was at the beach with her mother, Veda, on an autumn afternoon in 1929.
It is a story that will unsettle any reader. The incident is at the centre of a remarkable new book, which blends mystery, memoir, art criticism and Lincolnshire history. Laura Cumming’s mother was kidnapped as a child from the beach at Chapel St Leonards.
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