feather_ghyll

The Far Distant Oxus: Katharine Hull and Pamela Whitlock. Jonathan Cape, 1937 (fourth edition)

I’ve been keeping a look out for this book since hearing the story of two teenage girls who were inspired to write a story by Arthur Ransome’s 'Swallows and Amazons' series, and who not only succeeded but got it published. ( Read more... )

I cught two matches from the ATP Tour Finals at the O2. That is, I half-watched Del Potro vs Federer and the crowd battling it out to reach the semis on Saturday. ( Read more... )

Apparently there is going to be a film of Swallows and Amazons with Dan Stephens (aka Matthew Crawley from Downton Abbey) playing Captain Flint. I have no issue with Stephens playing James Turner...in several years’ time. I couldn’t find much online on the project, filming seems to have been delayed and it’s described as ‘in development’ on imdb. I was wondering if it would be an adaptation of the stage musical, but I think not now, based on what I've seen about the project.

On Monday night, in what was not a shock, despite Sue Barker’s loyal championing of Federer, Nadal vs. Djokovic, the top two players in the world, playing in the final. I didn’t begrudge the doubles players, exactly, but I did wish the singles match could have started sooner and that there hadn’t been an hour of filler in the studio. I was, again, half-asleep for the last two games.

( Read more... )

Over the holidays, I made the most of the opportunity to just sit down and read books from cover to cover. I started off with The Big Six by Arthur Ransome, which I really don't think I'd read before. ( Read more... )

I worked my way through The Woman in White - I believe I called every character a ninny at some junction.

I should have said the same thing about Family Playbill by Pamela Brown, ( Read more... )

I loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, which was recommended by callmemadam among others.

And then I read a Bessie Marchant, A Girl of the Northland, ( Read more... )

The latter was an interesting precursor to reading A Cousin from Canada by May Wynne, ( Read more... )

Rereading 'Secret Water' the other week was a real treat. ( Read more... )

I must have read 'Swallows and Amazons', the first book in the series, first, but I probably read them out of order, getting them out of the library and rereading them, and I'm not sure if I ever read them all. Although there was a time when I'd have said the Anne series was my favourite series, and I've been reading new-to-me Montgomery's over the last year, I'm basking in a lot of Ransome love at the moment. Looking back, it occurs to me that I liked 'mixed' series when I was at primary school: the Famous Five, the Lone Piners and Swallows and Amazons, and more girl-centric series the older I got: the Chalet girls, the Annes and the Abbey girls. That isn't to say that it was so clear-cut, I mean, I read Mallory Towers along with the Famous Five and was into the Scarlet Pimpernel in the lower part of secondary school, and I probably started buying my own copies of the Swallows and Amazons books about that time, too, thanks to more pocket money. Due to the availability of library copies if I wanted them (and yes, they were hardbacks with the nifty dust-jackets covered in a plastic binding) and my familiarity with the stories, I didn't hunt down copies of my own. Though if they came my way cheaply, i'd buy them. As a result, I've probably read the most land-bound book, 'Pigeon Post', the most. I had half resolved that this year I'd try to complete my collection of Chalet School books (which is mainly Armada paperbacks - I try not to think about the abridging that has gone on in them too hard), but right now I'm more enthused about getting a complete set of the Swallows and Amazons series.

Reading 'Secret Water' set me off to hunt the interwebs for resources. I may have been looking in the wrong places (livejournal and Google mainly) but there doesn't seem to be much around. I wanted something on the chronology of the books, essays on the characters and their roles, with an eye to gender, and on the themes of the books. The story needs all of them, from instigator Nancy, future naval commander John, the excellent Susan (who I really appreciated in 'SW'), dreamer and mapmaker Titty, to the others. There seems to be some stuff out there about Ransome-the-author, but not as much discussion of the text, just lots of short comments that can be summarised as 'Swallows and AMazons, oh yes, I loved them. Wasn't Nancy great? They're pure escapism'. Surely there's more to say than that!

Here's what I did find:

Swallows and Bolsheviks from oursin


This knocked my socks off:
Secret waters: Reliving author Arthur Ransome's literary journey along the Essex coast by Graham Hoyland

When my father was the age of an Amazon, one of his teachers was the poet W H Auden, who later called the 1930s "a low, dishonest decade". To adults, perhaps, it was, but to Ransome's fictional children it seems an age of innocence. What parent would now leave their young children (including a six-year-old, Bridget) to camp on an island unsupervised?
[A part of me is outraged on behalf of the excellent Susan Walker.)

Resources: Arthur Ransome/S and A background books [I'd probably need to see reviews before getting them.]

Icons based on cover art by keswindhover

Any other links would be very much welcomed.