I thought I’d lost it! But, on clearing out our mother’s house, my sister found the cuttings book I kept whilst making the original movie ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in 1973.
It includes a plan of the London double-decker bus where we received rudimentary lessons on location. Three bunkbeds on the top floor were meant to be used so we could rest after lunch. Mum said she forced me to lie down everyday but I can only remember a couple of occasion, once when I was reluctant, once when I was freezing cold after a swimming scene.
We changed into our costumes at the top of that bus, enjoying warmth from a gas stove that leaked rather alarmingly on one day necessitating an evacuation.
The exterior looked liked a conventional Routemaster with added curtains.
Lesley Bennett’s photo of the double decker buses at Bank Ground Farm in 1973
Once sitting at my desk, I found my italic fountain pen and began keeping a diary. One version of the first seven days spent in Cumbria is pasted into the scrap book. I later re-wrote a slightly more detailed and interesting version in a couple of notebooks and wrote about how I got the part of Titty, and the filming from different perspectives.
These pages describe the day spent travelling to Ambleside and a couple of days spent getting to know each other along with Dame Virginia McKenna, who played the Swallows’ mother, the producer Richard Pilbrow, David Blagden who was in charge of the sailing and the film director Cluade Whatham.
Encouraged by my mother, we began pasting in newspaper cuttings.
The Times and the Guardian were at Havethwaite Railway Station to take photographs on the first day of filming. The BBC Radio 4 newsreader, Alan Smith, who grew up in Cumbria, was a film extra that day and can be spotted standing in train doorway with his brother. He wrote to me with his memories of the day.
I began adding photos from contact sheets that Albert Clarke, the film’s stills photographer, took of the cast and crew. I wrote about the opening locations here.
There are pages of dictation and a few sketches of the film props. I drew the yellow Austin ‘taxi’ we drove in at the station.
There were some cuttings that I hadn’t seen for years until until I opened the pages of this mislaid cuttings book. Others can be found on earlier posts.
I took pages of dictation, learning about the plants and geology of the Lake District, about Beatrix Potter and the National Trust, but it’s a wonder any schoolwork was accomplished at all. We spent so much time on set. I fell behind in French and Maths but gained respectable exam grades that summer, gaining 80% in Geography. Perhaps I wrote about glacial lakes.
You can read more about the adventures we had whilst filming ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in books detailed on this website.
Different editions of ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons (1974) by Sophie Neville’
There is now an audiobook on ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’ published by The Lutterworth Press and available on all online platforms including Audible.
Like Arthur Ransome, I have ‘lived many lives in one.’ He also wrote, ‘Memory picks and choses’. Here are a few unusual ones:
A photograph of Sophie Neville photoshopped to look like Charlotte Rampling for ‘Broadchurch’
This gave me a fright: I was watching the ITV police series Broadchurch when I saw a photograph of me, aged seventeen, featured on screen. Only it wasn’t me. My face had been photo-shopped to look like a young Charlotte Rampling. Above is a screenshot. Here is the original:
Sophie Neville aged seventeen
No one had asked my permission, but what can I do but take it as a compliment?
Around this time I was briefly involved in the HTV seriesKidnapped. I played a boy. But opposite David McCallum (The Man From U.N.C.L.E), so who was I to argue. And I was paid.
I got the part in an odd way. They had forgotten to cast anybody for the role, but the producer had previously cast my sister in Arthur of the Britons and knew we lived only a few miles from the location. I agreed on the morning the scene was shot.
Appearing as a messenger boy in ‘Kidnapped’ produced by Patrick Dromgoole for HTV. What did they do to my hair?
I later stood in for the little boy who played Gerald Durrell in the first BBC drama series of My Family and Other Animals. Brian Blessed thought it hilarious. I was working behind the camera by that time but was skinny enough to squeeze into the costume.
Sophie Neville standing in for the boy playing Gerald Durrell getting a kiss from Brian Blessed who played Spiro
I was once on a train when the director of Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners asked if I could get to Gloucestershire to clear out my mother’s attic. I ended up filming with him for the next three or four days. It was exhausting – and unpaid – but a lot of de-cluttering got done. Check the apron from Seville. I’d bought it on honeymoon.
Sophie Neville filming in Gloucestershire with Betty TV
Piratøen – is the title for Swallows and Amazons in Danish – seen here on a flier that I only came across recently. I’d just had my DNA analyzed to discover I am 3% Danish due to admixture a few generations back. Do I look Danish?
Although I’ve worked on over 100 films and tv programmes, I have mostly been behind the camera, so don’t expect anyone to know who I am. They don’t. The marketing executive at StudioCanal had not, at first, wanted me to help promote the remastered DVD of ‘Swallows and Amazons’, which is understandable as Dame Virginia McKenna has the star billing. Then she must have watched the ‘filmen for hele familien’. I ended up giving Q&As at twelve cinemas. Some had audiences of 250 and the screenings were so popular that customers were being turned away.
Sophie Neville giving a Q&A in Kendal
And yet when a friend of mine told a lady that I was in ‘Swallows and Amazons’ she smiled apologetically and said she’d keep ‘an eye out for me.’
‘Why are you here?’ I was asked at Windermere Jetty in Cumbria. We had gathered to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the release of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in cinemas. How should I have answered that question? I replied saying, ‘I’ve been asked to give talk.’
Sophie Neville appearing on BBC TV at Windermere Jetty in Cumbria
You can now listen to the story of how the original film of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ was made on Audible.
The HTV series ‘Kidnapped’ (1978) is available on YouTube. Blink and you miss me, but the music is wonderful.
Having been released in cinemas in April 1974, the original movie ‘Swallows and Amazons’ was not accompanied by computer games but by puzzels, jigsaws and competitions. Here are a couple found recently whilst clearing out my mother’s house.
Few films are set in 1929, and yet it was that period, nearly a hundred years ago that gave the first film adaptation a certain style.
Graham Potter wrote saying: “I have just finished a DVD of S & A and found how much easier it is to see the details on the TV than in a cinema having to look from side to side. I was surprised to see how little sailing was shown and how the Amazons were not seen much. I think you were 12 or 13 at the time but looked younger. I have to to admit to enjoying the glimpses of the navy blue knickers in the opening scenes.”
One of the set of four jigsaw puzzles made when ‘Swallows & Amazons’ was released in cinemas in 1974, along with a Puffin paperback
Graham goes on to say, “I was surprised to see how you carried all the exciting scenes: left alone on the island, finding the secret harbour , dealing with leading lights , capturing and hiding Amazon, dealing with Mother’s visit during the night sailing, giving Captain Flint a good telling off for blaming John for firework and not listening to his warning about potential theft at his houseboat. Then the great finale when you are able to present him with his stolen life’s work in the trunk. Perhaps it was planned that you didn’t have too many lines to remember, as it enabled a very young girl to contribute such a lot to the film.”
This is very kind but I believe the film was made by the fact that Simon West who played John and Kit Seymour who played Nancy were good sailors. You can tell when they are sitting in a moored boat. While Claude Whatham was an exceptional director, ahead of his time stylistically, the director of photography uplifted the film by insisting we waited for clouds to pass. What else? – a hardworking and talented crew put together by Nevill Thompson. Simple costumes that never dated. Natural, well cut hair and a lack of make up – all the facets of filmmaking that you are not meant to notice.
Maybe our spiritedness as children carries the original film on. We are all in our sixties now, but the characters we played have become imaginary friends to many. As Shakespeare wrote, ‘Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air.’ The Tempest Would Ransome have agreed? I only know he discussed Shakespeare with Karl Radek.
I came across an essay in one of my school exercise books that I must have written aged twelve whilst on location. I was trying to explain that only about three minutes of what will be the finished film are captured during a long day’s filming on location. The piece is not well written.
A school essay written in 1973.
We went on to learn about the Spanish Main, which may have been requested by Claude Whatham, the director of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ so that I would know what Titty was talking about. On 1st June 1973, I was on location in the Lake District filming in the capture of the Amazon in Secret Harbour on Peel Island.
Perhaps I should add these remenants to a future edition of ‘The Making of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ (1974)’. You can order the illustrated paperback from libraries, find it for sale online, or listen to the audiobook:
Chloe Williams has just written from Ontario in Canada, to say, “Some books entertain. Some enlighten. And some, like The Making of Swallows and Amazons and The Secrets of Filming Swallows & Amazons, manage to bottle something impossibly rare: the feeling of looking back through a child’s eyes and realizing it was all real; the lake, the sails, the laughter and somehow, you were part of it.”
“These aren’t just behind-the-scenes diaries. They’re sun-dappled time machines. Your voice, both in memory and in your original childhood notes, is a miracle of tone: witty, observant, buoyant, and deeply human.”
Of the original movie, she wrote: “What A Christmas Story is to snowglobes and childhood winters, Swallows and Amazons (1974) is to summers on the water and you’ve preserved that magic with charm, heart, and astonishing detail.
“What makes these books unforgettable isn’t just nostalgia. It’s how alive they are. We feel the smell of old sails and camera tape, the blur of location shoots, the uncertainty and excitement of being a child caught in a grown-up world of filmmaking yet utterly at home in it. We meet legends like Virginia McKenna not as distant stars, but as fellow travelers in the adventure. And it’s a joy.”
The Making of Swallows and Amazons seems to resonate with:
Readers of nostalgic memoirs that celebrate childhood, nature, and storytelling
Adults who are captivated by the lake-country magic of Arthur Ransome
Film lovers who cherish insider views of filmmaking
Educators and parents seeking real-life adventure stories for young readers
Fans of Call the Midwife, The Durrells, and 84, Charing Cross Road
“The joy and authenticity in your books mirror exactly why Swallows & Amazons (1974) still has such a hold on people’s hearts. The memoirs don’t just tell the story of making the film, they recreate it, letting readers smell the lake air and see the magic unfold through a child’s eyes.”
The new audiobook
I’m hoping the audiobook will also amuse readers. It’s now available on all the online platforms including Audible, where isis being offered for free on their membership trial.
If you go down to Riverside Studios in London you might be in for a surprise. It is on the slipway below Hammersmith Bridge that the first daleks emerged from the River Thames in 1964, intent on invading Earth.
I’d been invited to a screening of the two-part ‘Doctor Who’ serial ‘Vengeance on Varos’, first broadcast in 1985 when it was watched by 7 million viewers.
After enjoying a very good lunch, I was taken down to the cinema foyer.
There I met up with the lovely actors I’d worked with in 1984 when I was their AFM – Assistant Floor Manager. As a production team we had office 513 in Threshold House above the Post Office on Shepherds Bush Green. The producer, John Nathan Turner and his secretary Sarah Lee shared a double office – 204 Union House, which was part of the same block. The technicians and designers such as Annie Hardinge, our costume designer, and Dorka Nieradzik, our Make Up designer, were based at Television Centre but came over for production meetings. Tony Snowden, our designer, worked out of Room 400 in the scenic block near the vast prop store where he found a questionable chair for the T.A.R.D.I.S. The Visual Effects Department had their own redbrick building on the West Way at North Acton.
I’d been responsible for setting up the read through with our glamorous Production Assistant, Jane Whittacker. It had then been my job to run and organise the rehearsals on the second floor of the BBC Rehearsal Rooms in North Acton where a star-studded canteen could be found on the top floor. Colin Baker remembered it as a tower of creativity that has sadly been torn down. Geraldine Alexander reminded me of the poles I used to mark out the sets, which were pretty abstract in Philip Martin’s script. I’d used coloured tape (rather than chalk) to given an idea of the dimensions on the rehearsal room floor. We had a T.A.R.D.I.S. consul but Colin had to tell me about sonic screwdrivers and blind us with fictional technology.
We had a small office off the rehearsal room where I’d work out call times for the read through, each rehearsal and set everything up for the studio – TC6 at BBC Television Centre where parking was near impossible. The little note book I kept has all the details. Programme ID: 50/LDL/G338P. We recorded one episode on 18th, 19th and 20th July, the other on 31st July, 1st and 2nd August 1984. It was high octane stuff.
It had been my responsibility to provide and look after the action props, prompt the actors and read parts if someone was missing. I’d also time each scene, reporting back to the script editor at the end of each day. You can read more in The Doctor Who Big Blue Podcast.
Sophie Neville with Geraldine Alexander, Nicola Bryant, Stephen Yardley, Colin Baker – the 6th Doctor – and Forbes Collins
Geraldine, Nicola and I were all born in 1960. Geraldine rushed over from the set of ‘Bridgerton’ where she is playing Mrs Wilson in her/their forth season. It is unusual for those working behind the scenes to be photographed with the cast but Who fans appreciate our involvement and know we hold secrets kept for years.
After watching the first episode of ‘Vengeance on Varos’ on the big screen, Stephen Yardley, Forbes Collins and I were invited to speak on stage and answer questions from the audience. Stephen told us that he’d been working as a hod carrier, building the Victoria Line, when he saw auditions being advertised in a copy of The Stage at his library and won his first part as an actor.
I spoke about the Varian knitting I’d invented for his fictional wife played by Shiela Reid and the secret of how the T.A.R.D.I.S. judder was achieved. Philip Martin’s original script had called for rock tunnels but our director Ron Jones had decided that passages lined in iron plating would look more convincing and unusual. We had a ventilation shaft, but no crawling. Ron thought it too corny.
Stephen Yardley, Sophie Neville and Forbes Collins talking about ‘Doctor Who’
After the Q&A official photographs taken under the auspices of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society who printed them out on the spot.
It was great to meet some of the serious ‘Doctor Who’ fans as we had made the series thinking of what would interest them. I had mentioned that I’d worked with Colin Baker and Patrick Troughton (photos and full disclosure on my last post here) but forgot to tell them that I’d met Tom Baker, the third Doctor, when I’d appeared in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ and had invited Peter Davidson on ‘Russell Harty’s Christmas Party’, which I’d set up in 1982 when I was first a graduate trainee at the BBC.
Rob with Sophie Neville, Geraldine Alexander, Nicola Bryant, Stephen Yardley, Colin Baker and Forbes Collins
After a screening of the second episode, Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant and Geraldine Alexander spoke at a second Q & A. Colin remembered that Nicola’s underwear and red shoes had been stolen from her dressing room halfway through the recording. The memory came storming back to me. It had created quite a panic. I think she had to transmogrify into a bird in a pair that was rather rapidly dyed.
Sadly the actor Nabil Shaban, who had played our monster Sil, was too unwell to come. He’d been a delightful actor to work with, driving in from Aldershot in Hampshire, although he also had a base in Tooting. Nabil had used his wheel chair in the rehearsals, but Ron Jones needed him to ride on something that would have him at head height with the other actors, so he could achieve ‘two-shots’. The Visual Effects Department built an aquarium podium on wheels. I insisted there was a gap at the top of this to show that it was not merely a disguise.
Colin Baker speaking about ‘Doctor Who’ with Nicola Bryant and Geraldine Alexander
I was then invited to sign copies of my books and some beautiful new ‘Doctor Who’ posters, which will be sold to raise money for charity. I already had a fan interested in one, which will benefit The Waterberg Trust. I was joined by our production associate Sue Anstruther who had arrived from BBC Radio to work on the series and look after John Nathan Turner who spent rather too much time in the BBC bar.
Sue Anstruther, Alex Moore and Sophie Neville
The day had taken me back forty years and was most enjoyable. Many thanks go to Alex Moore and all those who organised it so beautifully. You can find more photos on my previous blog post.
The end credits to ‘Vengeance on Varos’
I put one, brief story about a sand monster in ‘Doctor Who’ and a few more about working in television in my memoir ‘Funnily Enough’, which is available online as a paperback, ebook or audio book. You can read a sample for free here:
Funnily Enough – the paperback with black and white illustrations
On Sunday 9th February 2025, I was invited to join the Projections in Time panel since I worked on ‘Doctor Who’ in the summer of 1984 .
An email arrived with this wonderful invitation:
“Over the last few years, I have been part of a team at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, organising screenings based around a number of television series, but the most popular and regular of these events have been based around Doctor Who.”
“In conjunction with the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, the next event at will be a screening celebrating Vengeance on Varos, a Doctor Who story made in the studio at BBC Television Centre.
The story will be shown, followed by Q&As, as well as a photo studio session, in which fans can have a photo with the guests, and an autograph session. So far, Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Nabil Shaban, Gerladine Alexander, Stephen Yardley and Forbes Collins will be joining us. You can buy tickets here.
“I always do my best to include crew at these events as I think they have more of an overall impression.” Apparently those on the production team have been very popular and do well at the autograph table. I’ve been thinking up some stories.
Sophie Neville working on the set of Doctor Who in TC6 with Nibil Shaban, Martin Jarvis and Forbes Collins
Below is a plan of the day after, lunch for the guests, with two panels of guests.
“At the autograph table we’ll provide photos to sign, although attendees normally bring their own items. There are normally a handful of posters of the event, which we ask all of the guests to sign, which are then sold for charity.”
The story was recently re-released on a Bluray – with studio footage.
In 1983, I worked for the director Andrew Morgan on the BBC adaptation of Arthur Ransome’s books ‘Coot Club’ and ‘The Big Six’ that was screened under the title ‘Swallows and Amazons Forever!’ and is now available on DVD.
Swallows And Amazons Forever! (Coot Club & The Big Six) SPECIAL EDITION [DVD]
Andrew cast Colin Baker as Doctor Dudgeon. I had found Henry Dimbleby to play his son Tom Dudgeon, the hero of the story.
Colin Baker as Doctor Dudgeon in ‘Coot Club’ – photo Sophie Neville
I also took this photo, below, of Patrick Troughton who played Harry Bangate the eel man in in ‘The Big Six’.
Patrick Troughton playing Harry Bangate the eel man in ‘The Big Six’ – photo Sophie Neville
Many of those working on our crew worked on episodes of Doctor Who at some stage, including Di Brookes, Liz Mace and the sound recordist Colin March. I have written about the Doctor Who connection here. Having read Andrew Morgan’s memoir, I remember that Colin found out that he’d been offered the part of The Doctor while he was with us on location in Norfolk. He was thrilled.
Assistant Make-up Designer Penny Fergusson with John Woodvine who played PC Tedder in ‘Coot Club’, having appeared in ‘Doctor Who’
If we could promise a big enough audience, I could ask if Riverside Studios would host a similar event celebrating ‘Swallows and Amazons Forever!’ Please let me know if you’d be interested in coming in the comments below. I’ll ask Colin Baker if he could come when I see him on 9th February.
Those who played Time Lords had other incarnations. As a researcher, I invited Peter Davidson to sing on the chat show Russell Harty’s Christmas Party, which was fun, and appeared with Tom Baker in Sherlock Holmes. He was brilliant in that role. I wore rather a tight corset.
Sophie Neville with Tom Baker in ‘Sherlock Holmes’
You can read more about the adventures I had working in film and television in ‘Funnily Enough’, now also available on audible.
Funnily Enough – the paperback with black and white illustrations
“The smell is just the same.” Suzanna Hamilton began rowing me across Coniston Water from Bank Ground Farm, taking us back to childhood days.
“It sounds the same.” The colours, the landscape, the feeling of being out on the water was still magical.
Suzanna Hamilton and Sophie Neville at Coniston Water in the Lake District
As girls, Suzanna and I had appeared as Mate Susan and Able seaman Titty in Richard Pilbrow’s original film of Swallows and Amazons, adapted by David Wood and released in cinemas on 4th April 1974. It starred Dame Virginia McKenna and Ronald Fraser but it was the two of us who were invited to return to the film locations in 2003 to be interviewed by Ben Fogle for an episode of the long-running BBC series Country File. Thanks to sunshiny weather and the support of Geraint and Helen Lewis, his report proved so successful that it was repeated on Country Tracks and featured in the series Big Screen Britain alongside iconic landscape movies such as The Dam Busters and Whistle Down the Wind.
We had been talking about swimming off Peel Island soon after we began filming Swallows and Amazons in the Lake District in May 1973. The director, Claude Whatham, was fresh from making a BAFTA nominated adaptation of Cider With Rosie when he cast Sten Grendon as young Laurie Lee, and the rock-and-roll movie That’ll Be The Day starring David Essex and Ringo Starr. Although happy out on the water, he knew little about boats. The producer, Richard Pilbrow, had insisted on finding children who could sail well rather than audition young actors and teach them to sail, and advertised the opportunity in sailing clubs. This was pivotal. Simon West (who played John), Kit Seymour (Nancy) and Lesley Bennett (Peggy) all had experience with a natural feeling for the wind and emanated confidence. They were only given a couple of days to get used to sailing the little boats used as Swallow and Amazon before filming began and yet their skill ended up making the film a classic.
Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies
We had instruction from a sailing director in the form of a good looking actor called David Blagden. He’d recently crossed the Atlantic in a nineteen foot yacht called Willing Griffin but was unfamiliar with blustery Lakeland winds and did not know how to break down a script. Simon, aged eleven, ended up explaining to Claude how to get a decent shot. Suzanna took her lead from him and I clung to the gunwales, trying hard not to shiver in a costume designed by Emma Porteous that consisted of no more than a short yellow dress and enormous pair of navy blue gym knickers.
It was unusual for a movie to feature so many scenes set in two small boats. Mike Turk, whose family had been building boats since 1295, and Nick Newby of Nicol End Marine on Derwentwater, took up the challenge of constructing Claude a cross-shaped pontoon to act as a mobile camera mount so that our dialogue could be captured. This extraordinary vessel had two outboards but wasn’t easy to handle. The dinghies were wired to it with underwater cables but tended to pull away. The base to Swallow’s mast broke, proving safety was an issue, but the idea eventually worked.
Richard Pilbrow and his film crew on the camera pontoon
A grey punt was also used. I remember Simon West towing it as he rowed us into Rio. It was easy to transport from one lake to another but must have been tippy. Somehow David Cadwallader, the grip, managed to keep the horizon horizontal using no more than a spirit level. Shadows were lifted from our faces by using huge reflector boards apt to catch the wind. It must have been impossible to use filler lights out on the water, although they somehow managed to power a number of sets on Peel Island.
Sophie Neville in the Amazon with DOP Denis Lewiston, his 16mm camera and a reflector board ~ photo: Martin Neville
Richard Pilbrow kindly sent me Swallow’s pennant from his home in America. Unlike Ransome’s original sketch of the crossed flags, the bird flies away from the mast, which is technically incorrect, but I was thrilled to receive the genuine film prop used in vision. If you look closely you can see some of the stitches I made whilst in conversation with Mother, played by Virginia McKenna.
It would have been good if Swallow’s hull had been painted white in line with illustrations in the books. Her varnished planks are a nod to the 1970’s when everyone was busy stripping pine, but the important detail is that she has a keel rather than a centerboard. It makes her difficult to turn, and markedly slower than Amazon, but grants her stability. This feature may have saved us when we really did just miss colliding with the MV Tern on Windermere, which alarmed my father who was on the Tern’s deck. He knew how difficult Swallow would be to turn with the larger vessel taking our wind. We were fully laden with camping gear and yet totally lacking buoyancy of any kind.
Simon West as Captain John sailing Swallow. Sten Grendon plays the Boy Roger
One secret of filming Swallows and Amazons is that it was set on four different lakes, a smelly lily pond that served as Octopus Lagoon, and Mrs Batty’s barn where night sailing sequences were shot with Swallow mounted on a cradle. One challenging scene was when the Swallows were cast off from Wild Cat Island to sail north to the Amazon River, leaving Titty behind to light the lanterns. I slipped underwater whilst pushing her free of branches overhanging the landing place but regained my footing and waved them off. Simon caught ‘a fair wind’ but the boom swung so far out that Suzanna held the mainsheet by the figure-of-eight knot and Swallow sped up Coniston Water like a ‘pea in a peashooter’, as Ransome wrote in Winter Holiday. A gust hit them broadside as they cleared the island and Swallow gybed, but Simon calmly stood to catch the boom, scarified the wind and took her on up the lake. Watching the sequence still brings tears to my eyes.
Simon West and Suzanna Hamilton at the helm of Swallow with Stephen Grendon in the bows, while Sophie Neville looks on from the shore of Peel Island
No one had given much consideration to the rowing involved in the story. Built as a run-about boat by William King of Burnham-on-Crouch, Swallow has two sets of rowlocks but it was tricky to keep time when she was wired to the camera pontoon. The first scene attempted was when the Boy Roger and I had to row her back from the charcoal burners with Susan at the tiller.
Sophie Neville as Titty and Stephen Grendon as Roger rowing to Cormorant Island
We rowed again on Derwentwater, making our way out to Cormorant Island to look for the treasure. It took everything in me, but I later managed to row Amazon out of Secret Harbour in one take at the end of a long day filming. The action was repeated with Denis Lewiston, the lighting-cameraman, and his 35mm Panavision camera in the stern. Cold, with wet feet, I completed the scene but had to be carried ashore by a frogman acting as the safety officer. Titty later anchors Amazon off Cormorant Island on Derwentwater, but the shot of her wrapped in the sail, sleeping aboard, was taken in the darkened barn at Bank Ground Farm. The fishing scenes were recorded on Elterwater with Swallow moored near the reedbeds.
Sophie Neville as Titty and Simon West as John
My one regret is that we didn’t follow the book when sailing the captured Amazon back to Wild Cat Island. The wind was up and Claude Whatham needed Simon to sail Swallow ahead of the Amazon which was lashed to the pontoon. I originally took the tiller as Titty is urged to in the story, but had trouble with the rudder and Susan is at the helm on the cover of the paperbacks brought out to accompany the film and a DVD distributed by the Daily Mail.
I was somewhat surprised to see Swallow outside Elstree Studios where we went to post-sync the film. They set up a tank on the sound stage so that Bill Rowe, the dubbing editor who was to win an Oscar for The Last Emperor, could capture the sounds so taken for granted and yet so evocative of handling wooden boats. I was concerned that she’d been given away (and she nearly was) but, as Richard Pilbrow made plans to adapt other Ransome books, she was sent to Mike Turk’s warehouse in Twickenham and stored with maritime props such as the Grand Turk, a replica of HMS Indefatigable, built in 1996 in Turkey for Hornblower.
When Mike’s collection was eventually auctioned in 2010 I was alerted, first by my father, then by Magnus Smith. We found Swallow’s details online, took one look at the photos and clubbed together to purchase her, launching SailRansome at the 2011 London Boat Show. The idea that others could go out in her with an experienced skipper was greeted by John McCarthy who recorded the sounds of sailing Swallow for Paddling With Peter Duck, his programme made for BBC Radio 4.
Peter Willis in the Nancy Blackett with John McCarthy
The Arthur Ransome Society now own both historic dinghies. Rupert Maas valued Swallow highly when she appeared on BBC Antiques Roadshow in 2021.Everyone gasped but her true worth is akin to Captain Flint’s hidden treasure: instead of gold ingots his trunk contained precious memories that no doubt kept him on course when the storms of life blew in. Just as Arthur Ransome’s books grant us solace, my prayer is that many will be able to grab the chance of sailing the little boats that take us into the stories immortalized on film so long ago.
Back in 1974, none of us knew that Amazon had been used in the BBC adaptation of Swallows and Amazons made just eleven years previously and broadcast in 1963. I met the White family when they brought Amazon from Kent to Cumbria to feature in Country File. Ben Fogle had found their twin daughters on Peel Island, looking very much like Nancy and Peggy in damp bathing costumes having been swimming in the lake. It has been extremely generous of them to enable other families to sail such a precious boat.
Not so very long ago, a few TARS joined me at Keswick for a talk and screening of Swallows and Amazons at the Alhambra cinema when we grabbed the chance to go aboard the Lady Derwentwater. Nick Newby explained how she had been decommissioned in 1973 to appear as Captain Flint’s houseboat. Her temporary conversion was overseen by Ian Whittaker, the set dresser who went on to be nominated for a number of awards and won an Oscar in 1993 for his work on Howard’s End. The Lady Derwentwater has since been given a new stern but is in good shape, back in her role as a passenger launch.
The mfp Vinyl LP of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ with Sophie Neville and Simon West bringing Swallow into her harbour
Arthur Ransome was taught to sail on Coniston Water by the Collingwoods in a boat they kept below Lane Head, now known as Swallow I. People often ask if the original Swallow II, a sea-going dingy with a standing lugsail built by William Crossfield, and sailed by the Ransomes, is still around. After being kept on a mooring in Bowness Bay, where she was looked after by a boatman called John Walker, she was sold in September 1935 and sadly ‘vanished without a trace’.
The Amazon, originally named Mavis, and also sailed by the Altounyan family, now resides in the John Ruskin Museum at Coniston where she can be visited much like a great aunt. Ransome’s dinghy Coch-y-bonddhu or Cocky, the model for Scarab in his books, restored and owned by TARS, is on display at Windermere Jetty, the museum where the fourteen foot RNSA dinghies used in the 2016 movie of Swallows and Amazons have been moored. A few of the steamboats used to dress the scenes set at Bowness-on-Windermere or Rio in 1973, such as Osprey and George Pattinson’s launch Lady Elizabeth, may be in residence. They are currently restoring the SL Esperance used by Ransome as his model for the houseboat.
In 1983, I worked behind-the-scenes on the BBC drama serial of Coot Club and The Big Six (and wrote Extras for the DVD titled Swallows and Amazons Forever!) We spent three months filming on the Broads, using the four-berth gaff sloop Lullaby to play the Teasel, a vintage dinghy for Titmouse and a punt for Tom Dudgeon’s Dreadnaught. They have all been kept at Hunter’s Yard, near Ludham in Norfolk where you can hire classic boats. While exploring the Broads you can track down the Death and Glory, Janca, used to play the Hullabaloo’s Margoletta, and the wherry Albion used for Sir Garnet along with yachts like Pippa that were also featured in the serial. Hopefully, Arthur Ransome’s ‘good little ship’ the Nancy Blackett, bought with his ‘Spanish gold’ or royalties, will one day star as Goblin in a film adaptation of We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Arnaldo Putzu’s poster for the EMI film Swallows and Amazons (1974)
Half a century has passed since the original film Swallows and Amazons first came out in cinemas, the good little ships featured sailing improably on the poster. Thanks go to Magnus Smith, Rob Boden, Diana Wright, Marc Grimston, and all those who have looked after and lovingly restored the inspirational boats that appeared in the movie. They mean so much to so many. Three million cheers to those at The Arthur Ransome Society who are working with Hunters Yard in Ludham to make both little ships available for hire in 2025 .
Amazon will soon be available to hire at Hunter’s Yard, Ludham
If all goes to plan, you will be able to take them out. When you do, smell the freshness for me. Stroke the varnish, take in the feel of the ropes, the weight of the oars. It may be chilly, but that too is part of the experience of liaising with old boats out on the water.
An original hardback copy of my book on how we made the 1974 film of Swallows and Amazons was sold in Paddy Heron’s online auction for £86 to raise funds for BBC Children in Need 2024.
It exceeded bids for the autobiographies of Theresa May, Michael Ball, Charles Spencer, Tim Peake, Lynda La Plante, Father Alex Frost and a number of amazing biographies.
An unframed print of a portrait of her playing Titty executed by C. Assheton was also sold in the online charity auction, which raised a total of £14,705 – which is fantastic.
Paperback and ebook editions of my same story are also available at Waterstones and online from all the usual stockists including Amazon
On 6th April, the original cast of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ (1974) gathered to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the film’s release in London with David Wood who wrote the script.
It was unexpectedly amusing as can be seen in this recording kindly brought to us by Lee Pressmen and volunteers of the Cinema Museum where the original movie was shown before we were invited on stage by Brian Sibley.
Brian Sibley talks to Simon West, Suzanna Hamilton, Sophie Neville, Sten Grendon, Kit Seymour and screenwriter David Wood – photo Lee Pressman of the Cinema Museum
As soon as self-confessed ‘super fans’ arrived, the venue began to buzz with the question, “What was your favourite line from the film?”
“They’ve got India rubber necks.”
“They’re girls!”
“… must be a retired pirate. He’s working on his devilish plans.”
Sten Grendon, who played Roger, said it was undoubtedly: “I said – ‘Yes’.”
I’ve always liked: “X marks the spot where they ate six missionaries.” Although I often use, “Here we are, intrepid explorers making the first ever voyage into unchartered waters,” I think “I’ve got her. I’ve got her!” is the most appealing.
One viewer on Instagram claimed their favourite line was: “Titty that way.”
What is your favourite line?
Do add your line to the Comments below.
A recording of Brian’s interview with the screenwriter David Wood can be watched on this website here.
Sophie Neville 