Sponsored by
Ransome notes from the lake
A new film of Swallows and Amazons is being planned. David Overend reports from Coniston, the inspiration of Arthur Ransome.
A lot has changed since Arthur Ransome wrote Swallows and Amazons. The book remains a classic, an adventure idyll locked into an image of the Lake District to which much has happened in the past 80 years. Issues which he could never have imagined are impinging on his paradise.
The greatest threat now to the area is, ironically, its biggest industry – the 14 million visitors who annually descend on this small corner of England. A new Swallows and Amazons film can only add more, just as they followed in the wake of the Beatrix Potter movie, Miss Potter, starring Rene Zellweger and Ewan McGregor a couple of years ago.
Tourists bring money and prosperity to the Lakes – the Windermere steamers are the second most popular charging attraction in the country – but the effect of their presence is only too evident on the countryside.
Soil erosion on the many paths and tracks across the fells is now a major problem, and millions of pounds are spent every year in a bid to protect the environment. Some parts of the Park are gridlocked for much of the year, with the honey-pots of Bowness, Ambleside, Keswick and Grasmere clogged with tourists and vehicles. And the roads linking them are often nose-to-tail with traffic. As these parts become increasingly victims of their own success, the Lake District does, in places, retain much of the magic which captivated Arthur Ransome, the Leeds lad whose childhood holidays around Coniston had a powerful and permanent effect on him.
If you could take Ransome back to Coniston today, early on a summer morning when the tourists are still snoozing in their beds, he could still look across the water to Brantwood, the spiritual home of the great John Ruskin. And Ransome could believe that it was 1930, when Swallows and Amazons was published. It follows the holiday adventures of the Walker children, who sailed a borrowed dinghy named Swallow, and the Blackett children, whose dinghy was named Amazon.
Coniston has more or less managed to accommodate the tourists and the traffic without losing its identity. Ransome would have liked that. Lakeland became his home and his last resting place (he is buried in the beautiful churchyard of St Paul's, in Rusland) and his books entranced people and then enticed them to search out the settings where the Walkers and the Blacketts sailed into literary immortality.
Now the BBC wants to transform his most famous piece of literature into a film. Jamie Laurenson, executive producer for BBC Films, said: "It's a great story and a fantastic adventure. For a modern audience, you need to bring out that feeling of danger. It's only implied in the action because of when it was written, but it's about children taking on adult responsibilities. The youth of today are cosseted. We rail against couch potatoes and obesity in children, but ban conker fights, so I think this is very timely."
The film is being developed with Harbour Pictures, the company behind Calendar Girls and Kinky Boots, whose dinghy-sailing chief executive, Nick Barton, is a lifelong Ransome fan. Purists should be reassured that the adventures of the Walkers and the Blackett will still be set in the pre-war years. "I think that period feel is part of their charm," said Laurenson.
That is reassuring news for Geraint Lewis, the chairman of the Arthur Ransome Society, which is based at The Museum of Lakeland Life, in Kendal. He believes that the modest nature of the stories is an important element in their appeal. "Ransome was a very good writer and his deceptively simple style has endured. They have never gone completely out of fashion but there does seem to be a welling of interest in them now."
A member of the society has produced a guide which describes 19 walks that lead you to some of the places where Arthur Ransome lived, and various locations in Ransome's books, illustrated with many of Ransome's own photographs and drawings.
So, it's back to Coniston, the bustling village – once the centre of a huge copper-mining industry – flanked by the mighty bulk of The Old Man, at 2,633 feet, the highest point of the old county of Lancashire, and the lake.
There are already special-interest cruises on the Coniston Launch which explore the locations used by Ransome in his books.
The steam yacht Gondola (which, since a huge restoration, once again sails serenely around Coniston under the flag of the National Trust), provided the inspiration for Captain Flint's houseboat, although this was eventually modelled on Esperance, which is now at Windermere Steamboat Museum. In Coniston's Ruskin Museum, Ransome is remembered alongside Donald Campbell, another man forever connected with the lake. The speed ace is buried in the village's new cemetery. The lake is integral to Coniston, and the best way to see it, other than sailing its waters, is to look down on it. The Coppermines Valley, which leads into the heart of the Coniston fells – the horseshoe range of the Old Man, Swirl How and Weatherlam – is worth a visit, or, even better, a stay. It's a valley steeped in history where a youth hostel and a tiny enclave of mine buildings have been transformed into holiday cottages. They sit among the spoil heaps which Nature, in her own way, has made into something strangely beautiful. No sailing here, but plenty of scope for adventure, from walking to gorge scrambling.
The view from the Old Man itself, again if enjoyed first thing on a sunny summer's morning, must be much as it was in Ransome's day. Look down on miniature cottages and a shimmering lake. Perhaps, if you're lucky, there will be the sight of a single sail skimming across the waters. No voices, just the sound of a soft breeze, early birds and your own breathing. Perfection. Arthur Ransome would agree.
Ruskin Museum. Tel 015394 41164. www.ruskinmuseum.com
Steam yacht Gondola, visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk/gondola
Ransome cruises, visit www.conistonlaunch.co.uk
Holiday cottages in the Copper Mines Valley, www.coppermines.co.uk or tel 015394 41765.
The real-life adventures of Arthur Ransome
Michael Hickling
Arthur Ransome was not just a creator of innocent children's fiction. He had another life as a man of action, parts of which read like a Boys Own adventure story. Arthur was the son of a Leeds academic, Cyril Ransome, who took his young family during the long summer vacations to Nibthwaite near Coniston Water. Later, he sent Arthur to prep school in Windermere.
As a child, Arthur's favourite childhood book was Thorstein of the Mere, set around Coniston, by WG Collingwood, who had been secretary to John Ruskin. Later in life, Arthur made friends with Collingwood at his home beside Coniston Water and learned to sail here.
Destined to follow his father into an academic career, Arthur was one day sitting in the library of the college which was to become Leeds University when his eye was caught by a portrait of William Morris on the wall. He decided there and then that the life of a writer was the one he had to follow.
To his father's disgust, he abandoned his chemistry degree and took off for London, for a lowly job in a publishing house. It could have led to the sort of grinding Grub Street existence which wore down so many other aspiring literary hacks from the provinces.
But in 1907 Arthur struck lucky with Bohemia in London, a book describing the metropolitan arty set among whom he lived. Within two years he was doing well enough from his pen to marry Ivy Constance Walker and they had a baby. An abiding interest in folklore – plus the fact that he was not getting on very well with his wife – took him to Russia in 1913 for three months. Arthur returned to the country several times, fascinated by the turmoil it was in and, with the eye of an instinctive journalist, he made useful contacts among those he saw as the coming men on the Russian political scene – especially the Bolsheviks
As the Tsar's war on the Eastern Front went from bad to worse, Arthur persuaded the Daily News to take him on as a special correspondent and from Moscow he was able to watch as the canvas leading up to the fateful revolution of 1917 unfolded. British intelligence also took note of Arthur's abilities as a reporter to get information out of people and for a time may have used him as a spy.
Arthur identified Trotsky as one of the key figures, sought an interview and tried to arrange it through Trotsky's private secretary, a woman called Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina. Rather more came out of his approach, since Arthur took a fancy to Evgenia, and she to him.
The two were parted when Arthur came home to write up his revolutionary experiences in a book. He went back for her once it was published and with suspicious eyes everywhere, the two lovers extricated themselves from Moscow and escaped from the country by a heart-stopping route via Latvia.
Arthur divorced Ivy and in 1925 set up home with new wife Evgenia in the Lake District, not too far from the offices of the newspaper which by now had taken him up, the Manchester Guardian.
Newspaper hack work was no longer needed, however, once Swallows and Amazons was published in July 1930 and became an immediate hit. There were to be 12 in the series and they have never been out of print. The Ransome archive is now one of the glories of the Special Collections at Leeds University. The prodigious output of the man can be gauged from the fact that the catalogue, listing the written works alone, runs to 78 foolscap pages. Then there are boxes and boxes of photographs and drawings. One of the most fascinating exercises is to compare the work of a man called Farrier – who was commissioned to do the illustrations for Swallows and Amazons – with the ones which Arthur drew himself for his tale.
The folder with Farrier's drawings reveals superbly realised works of art – visually exciting and dramatic. Ransome's drawings, on the other hand, look like what they are – the efforts of an amateur, serviceable but rather inert and below the standard achieved by the professional.
But scrawled on Farrier's drawings, in Ransome's own hand, are all sorts of irritated objections to each image. He was clearly not keen on having a rival and insisted that his book carry his illustrations, as well as his words.
Email to a friend
Print this page- Leeds lose Ward to Palace: Is there anyone they can afford now?
- Sheffield Wednesday leaving it late to hijack Leeds United over Ward
- As Snodgrass dithers over Leeds, Warnock throws a lifeline
- Ball is in Leeds United’s court over contract - Snodgrass
- Police turning blind eye to Asian voter fraud, says MP
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 8 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: East
