Using diaries of Ransome and his wife, journals of his friends and Ransome's own notes, Roger Wardale has pieced together the story of how Swallows and Amazons and its Lake District successors came to be written.
"In 1929, Arthur Ransome (1884-1967), a journalist and war correspondent who was on the books of MI6, turned his hand to writing adventure stories for children. The result was Swallows and Amazons and eleven more wonderful books followed, spanning inpublication the turbulent years from 1930 to 1947. They changed the course of children's literature and have never been out of print since. In them, Ransome creates a world of escape so close to reality that it is utterly believable, a world in which things always turn out right in the end. Yet Swallows, Amazons and Coots shows that, to be properly appreciated today, the novels must be read as products of their era, inextricably bound up with Ransome's life and times as he bore witness to the end of Empire and the dark days of the Second World War. In the first critical book devoted wholly to the series, Julian Lovelock explores each novel in turn, offering an erudite assessment of Ransome's creative process and narrative technique, and highlighting his contradictory politics, his defence of rural England, and his reflections on colonialism and the place of women in society. Thus Lovelock demonstrates convincingly that, despite first appearances, the novels challenge as much as reinforce the pervading attitudes of their time.Written with a lightness of touch and enlivened by Ransome's own illustrations, Swallows, Amazons and Coots is both fresh and nostalgic. It will appeal to anyone who has enjoyed the world of Swallows and Amazons, and there is plenty here to challenge both the student and the Ransome enthusiast."
In 1973 Sophie Neville was cast as Titty alongside Virginia McKenna, Ronald Fraser and Suzanna Hamilton in the film Swallows & Amazons. Made before the advent of digital technology, the child stars lived out Arthur Ransome's epic adventure in the great outdoors without ever seeing a script. Encouraged by her mother, Sophie Neville kept a diary about her time filming on location in the lakes and mountains of Cumbria. Bouncy and effervescent, extracts from her childhood diary are interspersed among her memories of the cast and crew as well as photographs, maps and newspaper articles, offering a child's eye view of the making of the film from development to premiere - and the aftermath.
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Swallows and Amazons" by Arthur Ransome. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Some very imaginative children spend a summer camping on an island in the middle of an English lake. They sail on the lake and pretend they are in exotic parts of the world and, as a result, have many exciting adventures. Suggested level: primary, intermediate.
This text provides a compact guide to the ascent of all 214 peaks described in the late Alfred Wainwright's seven-volume pictorial guide to the Lakeland fells. It is designed to be taken on the fells, and not left at home on a bookshelf
This work provides a comprehensive look at the author's years with the Coniston Tigers, one of the first climbing clubs in the Lake District. It talks of his climbing with the great names such as George Basterfield, G.S. Sansom and C.F. Holland, and captures daring exploits of climbing in the 1930s long before modern safeguards.