Daphne Hughes-Warren

The daughter who never stopped looking

Daphne Rose Hughes was fourteen years old when her father disappeared. She grew up at Shannon with her sister Peggy, in the world ST had built — the racehorses, the farm, the tea. When he vanished she did not give up on him. She followed the trail he left for the rest of her life.

Daphne is the protagonist of Books 1 through 6. She travels from Shannon to Johannesburg, from Johannesburg to Wales, following her father's clues across three continents. She is intelligent, determined and entirely unwilling to be told that some things cannot be known.

She married Arthur French Green in 1946. She later married Allan Sidwell Warren in 1955. She had four sons — Patrick, Whitney, Robert and DuGallan, born 1957. She read the Hughes Chronicles books to her grandchildren before they existed as books. She passed the recipe tins to DuGallan in her final months with a last wish: carry on.

She died in 2019 aged 93. The question of ST — the one she had carried for 75 years — died with her unanswered. The trail passes now to her son.