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Laura Cumming

Biography

Laura Cumming

Laura Cumming has been the art critic of the Observer since 1999. Previously, she was arts editor of the New Statesman magazine, literary editor of the Listener, and deputy editor of Literary Review. She is a former columnist for the Herald and has contributed to the London Evening Standard, the Guardian, L’Express and Vogue. Her book THE VANISHING VELAZQUEZ was longlisted for the Bailie Gifford Prize and a New York Times bestseller.

Laura Cumming

Books by Laura Cumming

On Chapel Sands: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child
by Laura Cumming - Memoir, Nonfiction

In the fall of 1929, when Laura Cumming’s mother was three years old, she was kidnapped from a beach. When she turned up again in a nearby village several days later, she was found in perfect health and happiness. No one was ever accused of a crime. The incident quickly faded from her memory, and her parents never discussed it. To the contrary, they deliberately hid it from her, and she did not learn of it for half a century. For many years, while raising her in draconian isolation and protectiveness, they also hid the fact that she’d been adopted, and that shortly after the kidnapping, her name was changed from Grace to Betty. In ON CHAPEL SANDS, Cumming unspools the tale of her mother’s life and unravels the multiple mysteries at its core.