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Some topics are difficult to pigeonhole, and this is one:
From MI6 to tea with Trotsky: the secret life of Swallows and Amazons author Arthur Ransome
Lewis Jones
7 August 2016 • 8:00am
"Any book worth reading by children,” wrote Arthur Ransome in his autobiography, “is also worth reading by grown-up persons.” As one of the millions who loved the Swallows and Amazons books as a child, I was wary of revisiting them as a grown-up person, but I need not have been, as they remain a delight.
In clean and lively prose, with an earnest whimsy that steers just clear of the twee, Ransome charts the course of the Walker children (Captain John, Mate Susan, Able Seaman Titty and Ship’s Boy Roger: the Swallows), and the fierce local Blackett sisters (Captain Nancy and Mate Peggy: the Amazons), as they sail their way, sustained by pemmican (corned beef) and grog (ginger beer and lemonade), first to Wild Cat Island, then around the Norfolk Broads, into the North Sea, and all the way to China, where they are taught Latin by Missee Lee, the legendary pirate, “22 gong Taicoon”, and former cox of Newnham’s 2nd VIII.
The 12 books in the series are justly ranked as classics, standing with the children’s stories of Kipling, Barrie and Grahame, and are far superior to those myriad children’s books which “look like books but are not”, as Ransome put it.
He was also scathing about “so-called ‘dramatised versions’ which… offer no more than skeleton plots”, and said of the 1962 BBC series, in his diary: “Saw the ghastly mess they have made of poor old Swallows and Amazons.” I think he might have liked Philippa Lowthorpe’s forthcoming film, though, which is true to the spirit of his book, and so attentive to period detail that at one point Mrs Walker smokes a cigarette.
There is one minor change to the story, and one major one. Lest it provoke sniggers, Titty’s name has been changed to Tatty, which has infuriated the niece of Mavis Altounyan, on whom Titty was based, who thinks it was a “most disgustingly pompous thing to do”.
And in the book the Ransome character, the Blacketts’ uncle Jim Turner, aka “Captain Flint” (after the pirate created by Robert Louis Stevenson, whom Ransome much admired), has sequestered himself on his houseboat to write his memoirs. In the film he is engaged in espionage and pursued by Russian agents, which gives the story some grown-up oomph, and pays fitting tribute to the author’s wildly adventurous early life.
For Ransome was not merely a boaty old buffer with a walrus moustache who wrote children’s books. As a young journalist he reported on the Russian Revolution, was on intimate terms with its leaders and was himself an active player, which led to his recruitment by MI6.
He was born in 1884, in Leeds, where his adored father, Cyril, to whom he always felt he was “a sad disappointment”, was professor of history; he died when Arthur was 13. Like Captain John, Arthur was the eldest sibling, with a brother and two sisters. A countryman at heart, keen on shooting and fishing, every year Cyril Ransome took a cottage at Nibthwaite on Coniston Water, which became Arthur’s spiritual home.
etc...
Swallows and Amazons is out in cinemas from August 19
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/20...-trotsky-the-secret-life-of-swallows-and-ama/
Page includes video trailer for the new film.
We already have a short thread on Arthur Ransome's MI5 and Soviet links:
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/how-mi5-watched-childrens-author.20798/#post-506982
From MI6 to tea with Trotsky: the secret life of Swallows and Amazons author Arthur Ransome
Lewis Jones
7 August 2016 • 8:00am
"Any book worth reading by children,” wrote Arthur Ransome in his autobiography, “is also worth reading by grown-up persons.” As one of the millions who loved the Swallows and Amazons books as a child, I was wary of revisiting them as a grown-up person, but I need not have been, as they remain a delight.
In clean and lively prose, with an earnest whimsy that steers just clear of the twee, Ransome charts the course of the Walker children (Captain John, Mate Susan, Able Seaman Titty and Ship’s Boy Roger: the Swallows), and the fierce local Blackett sisters (Captain Nancy and Mate Peggy: the Amazons), as they sail their way, sustained by pemmican (corned beef) and grog (ginger beer and lemonade), first to Wild Cat Island, then around the Norfolk Broads, into the North Sea, and all the way to China, where they are taught Latin by Missee Lee, the legendary pirate, “22 gong Taicoon”, and former cox of Newnham’s 2nd VIII.
The 12 books in the series are justly ranked as classics, standing with the children’s stories of Kipling, Barrie and Grahame, and are far superior to those myriad children’s books which “look like books but are not”, as Ransome put it.
He was also scathing about “so-called ‘dramatised versions’ which… offer no more than skeleton plots”, and said of the 1962 BBC series, in his diary: “Saw the ghastly mess they have made of poor old Swallows and Amazons.” I think he might have liked Philippa Lowthorpe’s forthcoming film, though, which is true to the spirit of his book, and so attentive to period detail that at one point Mrs Walker smokes a cigarette.
There is one minor change to the story, and one major one. Lest it provoke sniggers, Titty’s name has been changed to Tatty, which has infuriated the niece of Mavis Altounyan, on whom Titty was based, who thinks it was a “most disgustingly pompous thing to do”.
And in the book the Ransome character, the Blacketts’ uncle Jim Turner, aka “Captain Flint” (after the pirate created by Robert Louis Stevenson, whom Ransome much admired), has sequestered himself on his houseboat to write his memoirs. In the film he is engaged in espionage and pursued by Russian agents, which gives the story some grown-up oomph, and pays fitting tribute to the author’s wildly adventurous early life.
For Ransome was not merely a boaty old buffer with a walrus moustache who wrote children’s books. As a young journalist he reported on the Russian Revolution, was on intimate terms with its leaders and was himself an active player, which led to his recruitment by MI6.
He was born in 1884, in Leeds, where his adored father, Cyril, to whom he always felt he was “a sad disappointment”, was professor of history; he died when Arthur was 13. Like Captain John, Arthur was the eldest sibling, with a brother and two sisters. A countryman at heart, keen on shooting and fishing, every year Cyril Ransome took a cottage at Nibthwaite on Coniston Water, which became Arthur’s spiritual home.
etc...
Swallows and Amazons is out in cinemas from August 19
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/20...-trotsky-the-secret-life-of-swallows-and-ama/
Page includes video trailer for the new film.
We already have a short thread on Arthur Ransome's MI5 and Soviet links:
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/how-mi5-watched-childrens-author.20798/#post-506982