Listen to the track:
🎵 Tracing Forsyte
Inspired by John Galsworthy’s 1912 visit to Wembury, and how it shaped The Forsyte Saga
Verse 1
He came down to Wembury in nineteen twelve
Not for the sea or a coastal walk
But chasing names in the parish books
Old blood and soil, not small talk
Galsworthy, with notebook hand
Tracing the line before the ink
Among the hedgerows, stone, and slate
Looking for more than you might think
Verse 2
The barn still leans, the field still runs
The path cuts down to the salt and shale
He wasn’t the first to walk this land
And Soames Forsyte walked the same trail
Fiction borrowed from family bones
A Devon thread in a London weave
The Forsyte Saga knew its roots
In farms long gone and stories we leave
Chorus
There’s a line from plough to page
From the churned-up ground to the printed stage
He gave it to Soames in the end
A man half truth and half pretend
Verse 3
He stood where the cliff meets the sky
Where the past can feel near but won’t reply
So he wrote it down, the search, the strain
The way some things never come again
Bridge
Not everyone finds what they’re due
The records fade, the facts slip through
But walk the path and you might see
A shadow of your own history
Final Chorus
There’s a thread in the Devon light
Between old lives and stories we write
Wembury kept what Galsworthy knew
And gave it to Soames to walk it through