Monday, April 27, 2026

Down a recherché rabbit hole: More on Vaughan Wilkins's family

One of this blog's more obscure heroes is Vaughan Wilkins, a now-obscure historical novelist who had quite a following from the 1930s to the 1950s. Through him, we discovered the spooky "strategic advisory" firm Hakluyt that occasionally features in Private Eye. That's because Wilkins's son Christopher was one of its founders.

Another of Vaughan Wilkins's sons is the artist William Wilkins. And his daughter Laura has published fiction under the names Laura Powell and Laura Vaughan. Powell and Vaughan are the middle names of her father and grandfather (who was christened William Vaughan Wilkins) respectively.

Vaughan Wilkins's only children's book, the interestingly of-its-period After Bath, was published in 1945. It is dedicated: "For Four Children with all my love: William, Christopher, Christine; and Richard."

So it looks as though he had at least one more child to investigate (that semicolon is intriguing), at least until the injunctions come in.

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