Posted by Adam Quinan on January 04, 2013 at 15:42:25 user Adam.
In Reply to: Re: Winter Holiday 1939 posted by Peter Hyland on January 04, 2013 at 09:32:52:
I came across my first Ransome, Peter Duck, in my school library at the age of eight. I read all the others from the same source. My parents did know of Ransome and even the Altounyan connection, my father knew an Altounyan uncle who worked for the same oil company, but had not read him as children. They were not particularly inspired by Ransome as a writer and so did not buy them for us.
The only Ransome we owned as children was Swallowdale which we happened to have checked out of the British Council library in Baghdad when the library was suddenly closed for political reasons. When the library eventually re-opened a number of years later they told my parents that we could keep it.
I had to buy my own copies many years later.