Posted by Peter Ceresole on September 26, 2012 at 09:18:22 user PeterC.
Being (as one is) in love with Dorothea, I wondered if anybody has ever found a hint of 'real life' prototypes for Dick and Dot. Other characters appear to have notional origins (the Altounians, the Busks, Horning boatbuilders, Gnosspelius) but I've never seen any mention of the ur-Callums. I'd always felt that they were London children of academic parents, but they could also have been based on the family of Manchester colleagues- journalists, maybe. Has anybody seen any clues?
Of course, creating middle class professionally origined children would not have been especially hard for him, so maybe there were no notional Callums. But I do wonder.