A Father's Name

My father’s name was Paul Clifford Mason. He was the third in a family of six children and was named after the title character (Paul Clifford) in the now infamous Bulwer-Lytton highwayman tale which happened to be the book my father's mother, Kate, was reading during that pregnancy. This book has the dubious notoriety of being the source of the purple prose which begins, “It was a dark and stormy night…” as its introductory sentence.


The saving grace of the writer, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, for his long and much mocked sentence, is that he was also the author credited with first penning the truism, “the pen is mightier than the sword”).

Is that interesting  – or even slightly interesting?

I love it!

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