Currently Waterstones nonfiction book of the month, this is a scrupulous work of storytelling, radiant with profound empathy and filial affection. Previously, she was a presenter of Nightwaves on Radio 3, arts producer for the BBC World Service and arts editor of the New Statesman. The man’s name is Frank, and he is a friend of George, who is in his customary position behind the camera.

On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming | Baillie Gifford Prize On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming | Baillie Gifford Prize

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. She sits in front of a bell tent with a kettle brewing on a portable stove, its meagre flame the result of the purple methylated spirits that fuelled it, and I scent that sharp stinging reek. Her mother also contributes her own recollections, in extracts of a memoir she wrote for her daughter. Then it seemed to me that all we needed was more evidence to solve it, more knowledge in the form of documents, letters, hard facts. The mystery of what happened, how it changed her, and her own children, has run through my days ever since I first heard of the incident on the beach 30 years ago.I worked very hard at it, turning up the corners of my mouth as far as I could over my hidden teeth and gums, but when I looked at the photos in our family albums, I felt I had only succeeded in looking weird. It faces the Netherlands across the water and on a tranquil day it sometimes feels as if you could walk straight across to the rival flatness of Holland. Photography gives us memories we hardly knew we had: the house where we were born, our infant selves, the embarrassing clothes we once wore. The person who may have seen Betty most often was Harold Blanchard – one of Hilda’s brothers – whose job it was to deliver bread door to door in Chapel, arriving in a cream-coloured baker’s van. Events are presented selectively, with rows and tears and moments of dullness and depression edited out.

On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming | Waterstones On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming | Waterstones

All of this is duly reported to the police, but not until the following day; and not, I suspect, by Veda. At its heart is a deeply loved little girl, who grew into a self-deprecating artist, wife and mother. Cumming is alive to art, because one of the things we learn from the book is that both her parents were artists. I have it still, as I have the teapot, which came from India; and I used to have the knife, so sharp it could skin a pepper. It was autumn, with few people around, but after “a prolonged moment of parental inattention”, the three-year-old had gone.It is on one such tranquil day that Betty, playing on the sands, disappears; her mother’s attention wanders for a second, and the next minute the child has vanished. It was incredible to me, when young, that this abundantly loving woman could so have loathed her father that she would change her own name to be free of his reach. The trail to this beach follows the course Nash Brook, which spills to the sea over rock platforms creating a waterfall and rock pools. Her later attempts to find out more about her birth story will be met with a wall of silence from the villagers among whom she grew up. Tennyson, the Victorian poet born and raised not far from Chapel, was drawn back to it all through his life.

On Chapel Sands - HLSI On Chapel Sands - HLSI

In some ways, the story is an unsubtle one, insofar as it has an unmistakable heroine and an equally clear-cut villain. And the apple fell into Sir Isaac Newton’s life and ideas at Woolsthorpe Manor, not far from Grantham. Which is where I will end this escape from my city: at Gibraltar Point, a magnificent nature reserve that runs along the coast about five miles south of Skegness. She is the author of two highly acclaimed books about art: A Face to the World, published in 2009, which drew on art, literature, history, philosophy and biography to investigate the drama of self-portraiture; and The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez, published in 2016, which told the haunting tale of a Reading bookseller’s discovery in 1845 of a lost portrait by Diego Velázquez and how his quest to uncover its strange history ruined his life. On the table before her is a small theatre of objects: some bowls, a brown glazed teapot and a rectangular pie dish.One day, an elderly woman dressed in black whom she had seen many times before, approached her and told her that ‘your grandmother wants to see you. When she was ten, George made Betty pose in the family garden, for an image to be used as a Christmas card.

On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons Review: On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons

She taught me how to remember paintings in those long-ago days before I could take their image home from the museum in the blink of an iPhone: first draw the frame, then summarise the main shapes and volumes in rapid thumbnail. In addition to her career in journalism, Cumming has written well-received books on self-portraits in art and the discovery of a lost portrait by Diego Velázquez in 1845. We celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories, traditions and living cultures; and we pay our respects to Elders past and present.One minute she was there, barefoot and absorbed, spade in hand, seconds later she was taken off the sands at the village of Chapel St Leonards apparently without anybody noticing at all.