Posted by Magnus Smith on January 10, 2019 at 08:10:00 user Magnus.
In Reply to: Re: Miss Lee and Latin posted by Robin Selby on January 09, 2019 at 11:58:28:
I want to follow up on recent comments that "[I] suspect that AR didn't give much thought at all to which schools the female Ss and As went to" and "I don’t know if Ransome had some private reason for naming [Great Marlow]".
AR was very particular in finding out details when he thought it important. You can read his letters to friends, and friends-of-friends, in Signalling To Mars researching the right background to give to the young Miss Lee.
He questions a friend about whether their son might have a book containing the Latin rhymes such as "Artifex and Opifex", and asks another friend if she recalls whether a female cox would take a rudder as a trophy, and which of the Cambridge colleges were likely to have such a rowing/classics student.
This was Feb 14th, 1941 in he book, if you want to look it up: letters to Margaret Reynold.
The research on rowing boat rudders is pretty thorough considering it never made it into the book (Chapter XIII is where you need to look). Instead we get one of my favourite quotes:
...a large photograph of a school hockey team...
"Pretty beefy," Roger murmured to himself.
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