Description
Book SynopsisArthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884. He had an adventurous life - as a baby in he was carried by his father to the top of the Old Man of Coniston, a peak that is 2,276ft high! He went to Russia in 1913 to study folklore and in 1914, at the start of World War I he became a foreign correspondent for the Daily News. In 1917 when the Russian Revolution began he became a journalist and was a special correspondent of the
Guardian. He played chess with Lenin and married Trotsky's personal secretary, Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina. On their return to England, he bought a cottage near Windermere in the Lake District and began writing children's stories. In a 1958 author's note, Ransome wrote: I have been often asked how I came to write
Swallows and Amazons. The answer is that it had its beginning long, long ago when, as children, my brother, my sisters and I spent most of our holidays on a farm at the south end of Coniston. We played in or on the lake or on the hills above . . .
Trade ReviewMr Ransome again equals or perhaps excels himself...every boy will vote this detective story super * New Statesman *
In my early teens I read Arthur Ransome's books,
The Coot Club and
The Big Six... They impressed me so much that I persuaded my father to take me on holiday to the Norfolk Broads where we had great fun teaching ourselves to sail, all on the impetus of Ransome's books -- Aidan Chambers * Observer *
A continuation of
Coot Club and as good as ever * Observer *
The adventure, though engrossing, is only part of a book in which the cry and flight of birds, the small of water and tarry ropes, and the jargon of men and boys brought up to use their hands and senses are all delightfully plain to us * Times Literary Supplement *
