2013 will be the 40th Anniversary of making of the EMI movie ‘Swallows and Amazons’. Forty years! Where did they go to? I must have been looking the other way.
Everyone wants to know what we are all doing now. I am only in touch with Richard Pilbrow, Suzanna Hamilton, Virginia McKenna, Lucy Batty of Bank Ground Farm and my own family. Please do send me an e-mail if you were involved in the film in anyway. It would be wonderful to hear from you. I am sophie@sophieneville.co.uk
Sophie Neville 
Happy New Year Sophie and family.
GBY!
Peter
Thank you!
Happy New Year to you Miss Neville, and thank you for all your wonderful posts here… may I use the e-mail address you give? I was not involved with the film but have some things I would like to say (nice things!).
It’s great to get comments about the film here, as it will help me to take things further. I am so glad you are enjoying the posts. Are you a member of TARS?
Yes I joined recently having re-read the books for the umpteenth time last year but haven’t attended any meetings or anything yet. I see you’re doing a talk in Brokenhurst in May for members which sounds interesting. One thing I wanted to say was that I was six when I first saw the film (when it first came out) and so grew up with you very much as “my” Titty, in that you are how I see her when I read the books. It was rather funny, because when I saw a picture of you here it was like “so that’s what Titty looks like as a grown up”! I’ve had many thoughts about what did happen to Titty and to the others in later life and, of course, it would inevitably have involved The War. I’ve taken clues from the books and there’s a reference in “Swallowdale” to Titty learning (and hating) French. Well in my “universe” she masters it and goes on to study in Paris in the late 30s which eventually leads her to join SOE. Just a thought. Sorry to ramble. Thanks again for everything.
I think my grandfather was in the SOE. He’d been in the Forces since 1917 and had been brought up in France so French was his first language. The real Titty, Titty Altounyan helped run the family hospital in Aleppo. Petre Korbel from Romania has written to tell me that she was a favourite of Arthur Ransome and was portrayed in the book with some accuracy. She was a sensitive child and later had problems at school when classmates discovered that the “small Armenian girl” was Titty from the book. I’ve been told that Susie Altounyan was so tired of being assocaited with the character Susan in ‘Swallows & Amazons’ that she made a decision to emigrate to France. After the surrender of France, during WWII, Susan was arrested and spent four years in a camp and Nazi prison. Later, she had three children, but two of them died tragically. Until the end of her days she was explaining that she wasn´t domineering and practical Susan Walker, but quite a different person. She was very beautiful and a wonderful dancer.