Book description
Dufty Dufty Popple & Dunn is a traditional solicitors' firm in the
small Midlands town of Hockam (pronounced Hokum, as the local residents
are at pains to point out). This heart-warming collection of stories
revolves around the lives, relationships, triumphs and failures of the
good people of Hockam and of the lawyers to whom they look for help. We
meet the lonely dentist and his noisy neighbours, the TV celebrity chef
and his complex family, the policeman and his beloved budgies, the Vicar
and the Major General, the greedy beneficiary of an uncle's will. These
and many others bring their problems to Dufty Dufty Popple & Dunn to
be resolved by the long-suffering and well-meaning members of the firm,
all of whom have their own lives to live when time permits, from
Bernard, the hapless trainee, to Hugo Dufty, the nominal senior partner.
And then, of course, there are the ever-present rumours concerning
Robert Popple, the former partner who departed from the firm some years
previously in mysterious circumstances. The whole symphony of life
portrayed here is conducted with gentle humour and charm by Hugo's
father, Charles Dufty, who founded the firm fifty years ago and whose
wisdom and deep understanding of the human condition helps to make sense
of even the most difficult and apparently insoluble problems. In this
humorous and touching debut collection, Alan Hammond paints a timeless
portrait of life in a rural English town. Welcome to Hockam. Alan
Hammond worked in North Yorkshire as a legal executive and his
experiences there became the inspiration for the stories in this, his
first book. He lives in Leatherhead, Surrey, with his wife Eileen.
