The Name of the Father

 My father’s name was Paul Clifford Mason. The ‘Paul Clifford’ name came from the title character in the now infamous Edward George Bulwer-Lytton highwayman tale which happened to be the book my grandmother, Kate, was reading during her pregnancy.  That book has the dubious fame 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 (author) 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”). 
Thank goodness for that!