Posted by Peter Ceresole on September 14, 2013 at 14:18:03 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Water and Empire: Examination Paper posted by Peter Hyland on September 14, 2013 at 12:18:00:
Peter: I don't think that AR depicted 'real' families. They were in his imagination, and were as real as he cared to make them. I suspect that the Collingwoods would be an example of a close knit middle class lakeland family, which the Blacketts were too. But I don't think that the resemblances need go much further. After all, a novelist doesn't write biographies; he invents his people, knows them absolutely and lays down the law. Of course some of his characters turned out to be extraordinarily close to their 'real' prototypes. Roger, for instance, teased for liking boats with engines, became in reality an RAF flying instructor and a successful drug inventor and developer.