In relation to this merged geography Ransome explained: But it also draws upon Windermere for the town on the lake and the island, as well as Derwent Water for the “peak at Darien”. Swallows and Amazons is primarily set around a lake which resembles Lake Coniston, with the hill of Coniston, also known as The Old Man of Coniston behind. There have also been claims that Ransome was a spy for the Foreign Office but his strong sympathy and personal friendships with the revolutionaries make this questionable. The two of them escaped Russia in 1919 and lived in the Baltic states for five years before returning to England and the Lake District.

A strong Bolshevik sympathiser he played chess with Lenin and went on to marry Trotsky’s secretary, Evgenia Shelepina, after he had divorced his first wife. Ransome was war correspondent for the Daily News, reporting first from the Russian Front and then on the early stages of the Russia Revolution.

Of course, in writing Swallows and Amazons, the book’s author Arthur Ransome was himself escaping into his own remembered past, to a place of childhood memories of Lake District holidays spent outdoors while his academic father – a professor of history at the University of Leeds – marked scripts and undertook some desultory research.Īnd Ransome needed to escape – from a world turned upside down. For any modern parent, one of the most striking features of the narrative is the high level of freedom the children are allowed – far higher than any parent would be happy with today.

This is crucial to the kind of childhood engagement with the landscape that they experience and the sense of escapism they are able to achieve.Īt the same time, the question of how much independence is appropriate is raised in each book by near disasters – including the children sailing at night alone with the potential of crashing or getting injured and lost on the hilltops.

In the novel, the children require physical and emotional distance from the adults and adult-controlled perceptions of the world. The hotly anticipated Swallows and Amazons film will introduce a whole new generation to the tales and adventures of John, Susan, Titty (renamed Tatty for a modern film audience) and Roger – who spend their summer holidays sailing, camping, fishing and exploring on the great waters and hills of the Lake District.įor many modern viewers, stories of exploration and piracy, may seem quite far removed from children’s lives today – the characters in the book are free to go off and explore by themselves for most of the summer holidays, which is a lifestyle that many of today’s British children don’t know much about.

Swallows and amazons author