Brick Train

I have nearly finished all the chapters of the book, so strictly speaking have nearly reached the end of my task. However, the digging around has meant I've found some unexpected things.

One is a letter which apparently hasn't been read by previous biographers - or even by scholars. It casts an entirely new light on Carroll's relations with the Liddell family and what Alice Liddell meant to him. I'm excited that I'll be the first one to have the chance to describe it in the book.

I'm also having another look at the Wasp in A Wig - the so called suppressed chapter of "Through the Looking Glass". I don't want to rest till I have got to the bottom of it - to my own satisfaction, I mean. It is either a very clever fake or a very bad but real bit of Carroll's writing.

Then there is the matter of some missing material.... but more later, after I have followed this clue up, since it may lead nowhere at all. I don't want to be too "Conan Doyle" about all this.

Today's picture is a train emerging from a hill very near Carroll's childhood home on Teesside. Darlington was there at the birth of the railways. This (if my model railway memories are correct) seems to be a Class A4 Pacific locomotive, similar to the famous "Mallard" of the 1930s.