RANSOME, Arthur

“The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth” 

Arthur Michell Ransome discovered a fascination with all things to do with boats and sailing when still a child, as his parents regularly took the family on holiday to the Lake District. This was reinforced during his prep-school years, which were spent in Windermere, where the freezing of the lake in 1895 inspired his later book Winter Holiday.  Although Ransome decided early in his adult life that writing would be his career, his output for over twenty years was primarily concerned with biography, literary criticism, Russian folk tales and rather partisan analyses of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (his second wife, Evgenia was Trotsky’s secretary).  During 1921 Ransome lived in Estonia where he spent some time building a boat, which he called Racundra.  His subsequent book, Racundra’s First Cruise, detailed her construction and maiden voyage and became his first truly successful publication. By 1929 he had settled in the Lake District and was writing the first of a series of books which were to become highlights of children’ s literature.  Swallows and Amazons, like all of the books in the series, details real boats, uses proper boating terms and his characterisations and locations are made believable by the real people and settings he based them on.  The authentic nature of the novels made it easy for children to imagine themselves on such adventures, and they became widely popular, a popularity which has not diminished over the years.

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