Posted by andyb on October 23, 2006 at 14:23:32 from 213.249.162.132 user beardbiter.
In Reply to: Re: All Things Ransome - out of date images posted by Adam Quinan on October 23, 2006 at 12:41:05:
Although I find Peter’s list of topics far more interesting than the domestic architecture of Beckfoot, it cannot be denied that household economies in 1920-30s Britain seem perennially fascinating to many contributors to this board. I suggest two reasons which may help account for this. Firstly, AR’s descriptions of technical physical activities: sailing, fishing, photography are especially strong and it may be that they appeal to those with an interest in what I call, in the loosest of terms, “engineering”; perhaps people with such interests are also drawn to write about plumbing, damp-courses and other DIY nightmares. The other reason involves the “n-word”: nostalgia. Unkind people might say that TARS and TARBOARD are basically a bunch of old buffers wittering on about their childhoods. Of course, we know that is untrue but for those of us who read AR in our infancy any discussion of his works inevitably evokes our own younger days. Any talk of water jugs or strawberry ices, it seems, induce “madeleine moments” and provoke accounts of coal fires, visits to grannies and getting up before dawn to lick the road clean.
Two completely tangential thoughts: AR’s ability to write about tying knots or rowing a boat is very much part of his craft as writer, I wonder if he was good at writing about such activities because he struggled to do them and had to think hard about them?
Secondly I wonder how many of us are in Adam’s situation of reading AR as ex-pats? Although I was born in England and have lived here all my adult life I first encountered AR as six year old in Australia who knew he was English but had no memory of England. In which case the landscape of the books is not just a blue remembered time but our own private Narnia.