Posted by Peter Hyland on December 28, 2021 at 02:29:21 user Peter_H.
In The Times (UK) today, the journalist Melanie Phillips mentions the three books which made a profound impression on her in childhood (she was an only child). They all involved rivers or lakes: The Water Babies, The Wind in the Willows and, yes, Swallows and Amazons which she describes as "the adventures of two groups of children on dinghies in the Lake District, who sail, camp and eat cans of corned beef called 'pemmican' in an independent and impressively mature kind of way. I had never done any of these things; yet I was absolutely a fellow Swallow, as intrepid as they."
I think that is a pretty fair summing up of S&A and it is good to see it in a national newspaper, although I think it is impossible to cram into one sentence the extended filigree of detail and excitement which Ransome put into his books.
Post a followup (Only if you agree to the Terms and Conditions)