Posted by Peter Ceresole on September 22, 2014 at 14:59:43 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Interview with Philippa Ryan posted by Magnus Smith on September 22, 2014 at 10:47:26:
But note that AR is Dorothea as well as Dick!
The difference there is that Dorothea is a gentle satire on writers, whereas it seems to me that Dick is someone AR would really have liked to be.
I suppose that Dorothea could also be a wish fulfillment, what Tabitha could have been if things hadn't gone so wrong.
I enjoy this kind of discussion because the excellence of the books makes me curious to know about the sources of AR's imagination. When I read them, I'm always very conscious of the time he wrote them, of what he might have been thinking. It's why I like to look at Low Ludderburn on Google Street View- you can practically look into the window of the converted barn where he worked, and look closely at the garage they built for Rattletrap, and it brings the stories into more vivid life. Similarly with Lanehead, and the Bank Ground Farm webcam where the correctly named 'Swallows and Amazons' view shows precisely the location of the first page of SA- and the Coniston Water North view shows the field across which the young AR would have walked to get to Lanehead. These are all additions to the pleasure of the books.