The secret was out; ‘his anecdotes are many, o u t r a g e o u s, and largely unrepeatable.’ Whilst we had been busy filming on a smelly lily pond the ‘joker’s joker’ had been languishing in the bar of the Kirkstone Foot Hotel just outside Ambleside saying that, ‘he was a lousy lover but loved to practice.’ Oh deary me. Worse was to come.
‘…baby, you’ve got to be a bit dotty.’ At least we were described as ‘bright and vivacious’.
We loved going to the cinema in Ambleside. David Blagden, our sailing director, had a small part of a prison officer in the movie Kidnapped, that we went to watch. It starred Michael Caine, Trevor Howard and Lawrence Douglas, with Jack Hawkins, Donald Pleasence and Gordon Jackson, but sadly not Ronald Fraser. He was still in the bar.
Suzanna Hamilton’s perspective on the day is not so very different but it is in purple.
Mediculs. A sure sign that our movie was both over-schedule and over budget, with nothing much anyone could do about it but keep going. We still had to capture the houseboat. And make that splendid gentleman walk the plank.
The distinguished actor Ronald Fraser fishing with Kit Seymour, Lesley Bennett, Suzanna Hamilton, Simon West, Sophie Neville and Stephen Grendon whilst filming on location in the Lake District ~ photo: Daphne Neville
If you would like to read more, Sophie’s diary is included within her ebook of ‘The Secrets of Making Swallows and Amazons (1974)’ available from online retailers and Amazon Kindle for £2.99 here
A few years ago, on a wet but beautiful day in Cumbria, we set off on a quest to find some of the locations used in Richard Pilbrow’s 1974 film of ‘Swallows and Amazons’.
To my delight our journey started with a drive down through the streets of Rio (Bowness) and along the east shore of Windermere to the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway Station at the southern end of the lake (or Antarctica as Titty labelled the region). It was here that we spent our very first day filming ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in May 1973. I had not been there since.
We had a chat to the train driver who explained that they now run six journeys a day. From Haverthwaite, the steam locomotives run alongside the River Leven to Lakeside Station. From here you can take a native steamer back up to Rio (the Bowness pier) or to the Far North (Ambleside, which is the town at the head of the lake where we lived whilst filming in that long distant summer when I was twelve years old.)
Whilst we used engine number 2073 in the movie, this steam locomotive 42085 was built in 1951. It uses about two tons of coal a day but it utterly magnificent. The driver probably uses rather a lot of steam oil too. It’s a smell I relish, familiar since childhood days spent on steamboats. I remember it from the SBA steamboat rally held on Windermere in 1991, which I describe in Funnily Enough.
Curiously, Haverthwaite Railway Station looked cleaner and shinier than when we used it as a film location in 1973. I can only suppose it was still in the process of being restored back then, when Simon Holland our set designer cluttered it up with push bikes and luggage trolleys. Much to our surprise, the yellow taxi we were transported in during the filming was actually driven along the platform.
We climbed aboard the train and I explored, as Titty would have done, discovering people seated inside from far distant lands.
David Wood’s screenplay for the film of Swallows and Amazons, directed by Claude Whatham, opens to find the Walker family cooped up in a railway carriage compartment as they travel north for their holidays.
Viginia McKenna at the Haverthwaite Railway Station in Cumbria soon after it re-opened in May 1973. Simon West, Suzanna Hamilton, Lesley Bennet, Kit Seymour and Sophie Neville are with her. The carridge with compartments is in the background ~ photo: Daphne Neville
We saw this distinctive carriage in a siding as we steamed down the valley. Funnily enough when I reached home, later the next day, I came across a photograph on the internet I had never seen before. It was of Virginia McKenna, playing Mrs Walker, reading a magazine inside the compartment. Strangely it turned up when I Googled my own name – Sophie Neville.
Virginia McKenna playing Mary Walker, mother of the Swallows in the EMI feature film of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ made in 1973
The train is not included in Arthur Ransome’s book of Swallows and Amazons, written in 1929, but he does feature locomotives in his later novels, notably Pigeon Post. I clearly remember filming the BBC adaptation of Coot Club at what must have been The Poppy Line, a steam railway in north Norfolk when Henry Dimbley, playing Tom Dudgeon, jumped aboard the moving train and met Dick and Dorothea.
Peter Walker of Mountain Goat with Sophie Neville at Lakeside Station, Windermere.
I jumped off the train at the Lakeside Station to meet up with Peter Walker of Mountain Goat. Peter has carefully researched and put together a Swallows and Amazons tour, exploring ‘High Greenland’, the ‘Forest’ and ‘High Hills’ to discover the places where Arthur Ransome lived. We set off in search of the places where he fished, wrote, and drank beer. It was fascinating – and proved an excellent way to spend a day in the Lake District despite the rain.
You can read more about the locations used in the original film of ‘Swallows and Amazons'(1974) in the paperback ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’ available from libraries, bookshops or online here.
There is also a similar ebook, entitled ‘The Secrets of Filming Swallows & Amazons (1974)’ available from all ebook distributors including Amazon
Sophie Neville, Simon West, Suzanna Hamilton and Stephen Grendon in Bowness in the summer of 1973
When I see press photographs like this one, I sigh with resignation. Why were our lives presented to the world thus? It was of course just because they asked us to pose in a pony and trap to add interest, but the ice-creams? It must have been taken the day we went exploring Rio. Our real time off from filming was spent quite differently. I was obliged to take five school exams.
Why did they make me write exams, when I had the responsibility for a feature film on my shoulders? My friends later wrote to assure me that they were quite easy, but I was tired and they were an added stress and a bore.
The letters, these little notes scrawled by friends at school, were a great support. It’s funny that Catherine wrote to me as Titty – none of the others did, but nicknames were a great thing, as was the fact that they were thinking of me that long summer term.
Suzanna had a blast of a day. Her diary is, as ever, quite different from mine.
One of the secrets of the film is Lesley Bennett, who played Peggy, was actually older than Kit Seymour, who played her elder sister Nancy Blackett. I don’t think it mattered in the least. Claude Whatham, Ronnie Cogan and Gareth Tandy came to Kit’s Birthday tea with the actor Ronald Fraser, who as Suzanna noted, was a little bit drunk. This can only mean he’d been drinking all day. It was a foreshadow of things to come.
Kit Seymour with Claude Whatham, 1973
Kit had a twin sister, who we had met at the sailing audition at Burnham on Crouch. Her mother sent up half a Birthday cake, which was quite fun, or so my mother thought.
Suzanna Hamilton playing Susan with Sophie Neville as Titty busy writing the ship’s log
Meanwhile I had more letters to reply to. My friends were wonderful, but it was up to me to keep my relationships in the best possible order. Returning to school after the filming was slightly daunting – but I had so much to catch up with that I was soon busy and fully integrated.
I made a point of not talking about the film at all unless I was specifically asked. This wasn’t easy, as I was bubbling over with stories, but I knew that it wasn’t on. Almost anything that I said about ‘Swallows and Amazons’ or even the Lake District, could have been construed as braggish. I did not care to imagine the consequences of this. As it happened I didn’t have to.
You can read more about what we got up to whilst making the movie in these books available from all the usual places. There is now also an audiobook on ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’.
Different editions of ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons (1974) by Sophie Neville’
Sophie Neville, Simon West and Suzanna Hamilton with Ronald Fraser playing Captain Flint in the 1973 film of Arthur Ransome’s ‘Swallows and Amazons’
Ronald Fraser! veteran of World War II movies who had won an award for playing Basil Allenby-Johnson in The Misfits, had arrived on the shore of Coniston Water in two-tone shoes. Curiously so had two stand-ins. A short lady for me, who had dark hair, and a lady with blonde hair for Suzanna Hamilton. I have blonde hair and Suzanna is dark, but that is how it was.
The other four actors didn’t have stand-ins, which seemed odd. Kit Seymour, who played Nancy Blackett, and Lesley Bennett in the role of Peggy, rehearsed as usual. The two boys, Simon West and Sten Grendon, were younger than us but never had stand-ins, so that seemed odder. We didn’t think the ladies would be very comfortable on Peel Island. There wasn’t exactly a powder room there.
Director Claude Whatham and Bobby Sitwell with Suzanna Hamilton playing Susan Walker and Ronald Fraser as Jim Turner aka Captain Flint
And we were some way into the filming, used to handling props that the stand-ins found alien. However they were very excited about coming over to Peel Island. They sat in our positions and read our lines back to Ronald Fraser whilst the scene at the camp site was lit, and returned to stand-in for us later when his close-ups were shot. Somehow they managed to do this in scanty summer clothing despite a brewing storm.
My stand-in. I liked her very much and was most interested in her tapestry, since I was doing one myself. Lots of the men in the crew were interested in her tapestry too. They hadn’t noticed mine.
Our stand-ins got a lot of help from the crew as they went from ship to shore. We didn’t, but then we were agile and wore life-jackets. Mummy didn’t wear a life-jacket, but she has always been surprising good at getting in and out of boats. Her comment on the matter of my stand-in was, ‘Most unsuitable for a children’s film.’ Mum became increasingly concise: ‘I don’t think that woman was invited. She just turned up.’
Enthused by our Stand-in, Lesley Bennett and I went into Ambleside that evening to buy more wool for our own tapestries.
The recording of our scene with Captain Flint on Peel Island went smoothly, and Claude Whatham the Director was happy with the result, but my diary reports that a Force 8 gale blew in. This spun the poor production team into a quandary.
The call sheet for Thursday 20th June documents how truly unpredictable the weather could be. We had a ‘Fine Weather Call’, an ‘Alternative Dull Weather Call’, ‘Rain Cover’ in the Houseboat cabin, and a pencilled-in end-plan entitled ‘Peel Island’, which is where we’d ended up. Richard Pilbrow, the Producer, had a 1970s embroidered patch sewn to his jeans which read: THE DECISION IS MAYBE AND THAT’S FINAL.
The Call Sheet that never-was for 20th June 1973. We ended up on Peel Island.
In Arthur Ransome’s book Swallows and Amazons there is a dramatic storm with lashing rain. We were rather disappointed that it was not included in David Wood’s screenplay. It could have been shot that afternoon, but this was not to be. I can remember Mum saying, ‘You can’t have everything.’
What had been good about the 20th June was that we, the Swallows and the
Amazons, were all together, not sailing but on Wild Cat Island, with the novelty of working with Captain Flint for the first time. Kit and Lesley had been so patient, waiting day after day for their scenes to come up. They were stuck having lessons with our tutor Mrs Causey in the red double-decker bus most of the time. But the fact that they were on stand-by was helpful to the production manager who had to wrestle with the film schedule and call sheets.
As it was, the storm blew hard but cleared the dull-weather clouds and the next day was glorious, one to remember forever…
You can read more in the paperback or ebook here. There is also an audiobook narrated by me, Sophie Neville.
The Lake District is very beautiful. The problem about filming there is that it can rain quite hard – ‘heavily’ – was the word I used in 1973.
By this stage in the filming of Swallows and Amazons Claude Whatham only had one ‘rain cover’ option. We were kept busy recording sea shanties with Virginia McKenna at the Kirkstone Foot Hotel by Lake Windermere while Dennis Lewiston, the DOP, lit Mrs Batty’s barn at Bank Ground Farm above Coniston Water.
Arthur Ransome must have done much to revive the songs of the sea:
Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies, Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain; For we’ve under orders for to sail for old England, And we may never see you fair ladies again.
We never got as far as the ranting and roaring bit in the film.
No one really knows how old this naval song is. The Oxford Book of Sea Songs, mentions it in the logbook of the Nellie of 1796, long before shanties really came established as a genre. All I know is that Titty loved it and was still singing it in Peter Duck when the song became quite useful for navigating the English Channel.
‘The first land we sighted was called the Dodman, Next Rame Head off Plymouth, Start, Portland and Wight; We sailed by Beachy, by Fairlight and Dover, And then we bore up for the South Foreland light,’ or sort of.
Walking into Mrs Batty’s barn that day was hugely exciting. Simon Holland, the art director or set designer, had rebuilt the camp there, lighting a real fire.
Sophie Neville as Titty
Swallow was nmounted on a cradle so that she could be rocked, as if by water, as the scenes of her sailing at night were shot. It was brilliant, she even went about. Moonlight wasn’t not a problem. Richard Pilbrow can correct me, but I think it was produced by a lamp called a ‘tall blonde’. I don’t think we had a wind machine. The Prop Men used a large sheet of cardboard to produce a breeze.
‘Wouldn’t Titty have liked this?’
‘Liked what?’
‘Sailing like this in the dark.’
’57, 58, 60, 61…’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Can’t you hear it? The wind in the trees? We must be near the bank. Quick, Susan lower the sail! Roger, catch the yard as it comes down!’ Then there is a crunch as the Swallows hit a landing stage. All mocked up. Quite fun.
‘What about Titty?’
Amazon was placed on the same mounting. I climbed aboard and started wrapping myself up in her white sail.
Children always love the irony of John saying, ‘She’s at the camp. She’ll be alright. She’s got a tent,’ when the shot cuts to me looking damp and uncomfortable about sleeping in Amazon, anchored out on the water.
Later I wake up and come out from under the sail to hear the burglars heaving Captain Flint’s trunk across Cormorant Island. All in all we achieved quite a bit on that wet day in Westmorland. Much safer and easier than being out on the water. Because the cradle was at waist height Claude was able to get lower angle shots than when out on the camera pontoon. Simon West, who played John, did really well. He managed to convince me that he was really sailing when I watched the film and I knew he wasn’t.
I’m pretty sure this scene of us inside a tent at night was actually shot on Peel Island but I may be wrong. We had a fire in the barn. If you look closely you can see an electric cable going into the lantern to boost light from the candle. The night scenes were tricky to light and shoot, but there was something about them that was intimate and exciting for children. I assume they would normally be in bed but it was the summer holiday and excitement was afoot.
Back at our guest house in Ambleside there was a real life drama. Little Simon Price had gone missing. He was the small boy last seen on the beach at Rio, having his shorts pulled up by his sister. The Police were called and everything. But as in a lot of real life situations, things were sorted out, and we returned to the mundane world of maths lessons. I was tutored by Helen, one of the students at the Charlotte Mason College of Education who was also lodging at Oaklands as Mrs Causey, our teacher, could not ‘do modern Maths.’
Suzanna Hamliton, Simon West, Claude Whatham, Sophie Neville, Kit Seymour, Jean McGill with Daphne Neville kneeling at Blackpool funfair in 1973
Apart from referring to us as The Swallows and The Amazons, our director Claude Whatham always called us his artistes – ‘My art-istes!’ This was, of course, because far from being trained actors we were just the children who made up his cast.
It was Saturday morning on 16th June 1973 and a day off from filming. We’d all been working hard. Instead of resting, Claude took us all to Blackpool, the famous holiday destination of the north west. None of us had ever been before. It was a great treat and hugely exciting. I can remember choosing the clothes I would wear, and putting on a shell necklace Daddy had brought back from Africa, for the occasion.
A complete contrast to camping and sailing in the wilds of Westmorland, Blackpool proved a day trip to remember.
It must have taken more than an hour-and-a-half to travel from Ambleside to the Blackpool promenade in those days. Jean McGill, our friend and driver, drove us down in the unit mini-bus. We were joined for the day by Ronnie Cogan, the hairdresser on the film crew, and of course Mum and Jane came as our parents and legal chaperones. I’m pretty sure Ronnie smoked the whole way there and back, but we all adored him and were thrilled he wanted to come too.
The first thing we did was to buy those crazy hats. I chose one I could wear later as I rather needed a sunhat. y the end of the day Sten had swapped his for Claude’s cap, which he wore for ages afterwards.
Claude Whatham with Stephen Grendon and Daphne Neville with Leseley Bennett
Lesley Bennett with Claude Whatham at Blackpool~ photo: Daphne Neville
I think Claude must have liked fun-fairs. Before Swallows and Amazons he directed That’ll be the Day, a rock and roll movie produced by David Puttman, set at a fun fair of the 1950s. It starred David Essex and Ringo Starr with Billy Fury singing “A Thousand Stars”, “Long Live Rock”, “That’s All Right Mama” and “What Did I Say”. Claude gave me the LP, which I played again and again.
Blackpool. We did it all. I was most impressed – and terrified out of my wits – by the big dipper but have always loved going in a pony and trap and racing donkeys. Looking back it seems we took a number of risks. What EMI’s insurance company would have said I do not know. Falling off a donkey could have cost quite a few expensive filming days but then EMI did own the circus we went to. There we saw true artistes, with snakes and crocodiles. The mind boggles.
We were exhilarated by the whole experience. Whilst it was tiring, it energised us, bringing us together as a family, all looking up to Claude as our father figure. He had two children of his own, but they must have been at college by then. Paul had been about sixteen when we made Cider with Rosie – Mum remembers him as a curly haired boy talking to his father about the casting. He sadly died in a motor cycle accident driving home from Oxford Polytechnic when he was only about nineteen. Claude never got over it. I weep for him, even now.
Jean McGill, Jane Grendon, Stephen Grendon, Kit Seymour, Sophie Neville, Claude Whatham, Simon West, Lesley Bennett, Suzanna Hamilton, Ronnie Cogan~ photo: Daphne Neville
I’ve written about the food we ate at the time here
And am adding memories to a post on life in 1973 here. Comments welcome!
Sophie Neville and Simon West on the cover of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ pub by the Daily Mail
Of all the wonderful days we spent filming Swallows and Amazons in 1973, the fishing scene, shot in a reedy bay on Elterwater was one I enjoyed most. It was a cold, rather wet morning but the Third Assistant, Gareth Tandy, taught us how to use our rods and we were soon absorbed in a way that Arthur Ransome would have understood well.
Our fragile bamboo fishing rods, one with a wooden reel, were supplied by a keen fisherman called Leslie Borwick, who brought up his own daughter and grandchildren on Arthur Ransome’s books. He kept the rods, which still belong to the family, who now lived near Sedburgh.
Filming the fishing scene from the camera punt on Elterwater
The only problem we had that day was keeping the fish alive. Bob Hedges our property master, the designer Simon Holland and Ian Whittaker, the set dresser, took it upon themselves to keep the perch as happy as they could, until they were – very carefully – attached to our hooks. Titty doesn’t catch one but Captain John did. Despite everyone’s best efforts it wasn’t a very lively perch.
Property Master Bob Hedges keeping the perch alive ~ photo: Daphne Neville
The big challenge was Roger’s great fish – a massive pike that meant to be snapping and ferocious. I’ve been told that it ended up being resuscitated in Keswick Hospital ICU – the Intensive Care Unit.
The local fisherman, Ian Whittaker, Simon Holland and Gareth Tandy with the fish photo: Daphne Neville
Sadly this is the only photograph we have of the set designers at work together. Later that afternoon we went to one of the few interiors of the film – the general store in Rio or Bowness-on-Windermere where we bought the rope for the lighthouse tree and four bottles of grog. In reality it was a sweet shop in the ‘seventies. It was later a barber shop and became a showroom for wood-burning stoves. Pigs were once kept around the back.
The Swallows in Woodland Road, Windermere in 1973
Back in 1973, Ian dressed the interior with boxes of wooden dolly pegs and other things you’d buy in brown paper bags. A wonderful 1920’s radio set and two purring cats really made the scene come alive, especially since, being in reticent explorer mode, we were a bit gruff in our communications with Mr Turner, the native shop keeper.
Sophie Neville in Rio with four bottles of grog ~ photo: Daphne Neville
Ian Whittaker struck me as being rather different from everyone else on the crew. He was a very nice looking man and a gentleman of the old school. I remember him telling me that he’d originally set out to be an actor but had found it so difficult to get work that he grabbed a chance to become a set-dresser or designer’s assistant. He found he rather enjoyed it, and stuck to the job despite his family thinking it was not much of a career. He proved them wrong. By 1971 he was working for Ken Russell on The Boy Friend – a musical about a musical starring Twiggy with Christopher Gable and Max Adian that I’d seen at school.
Woodland Road, Windermere
After Swallows and Amazons Ian worked on Ridley Scott’s film Alien with Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt and John Hurt and was nominated for an Oscar with the others on the design team. Eventually he won an Oscar for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration with the designer Luciana Arrighi for Howards End – the movie of EM Forster’s book starring Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham-Carter.
In 1994 Ian was nominated again, this time for Remains of the Day directed by James Ivory. After that he worked on Sense and Sensibility, Emma Thompson’s movie of the Jane Austen classic that launched Kate Winslet’s career, some of which was shot at Montacute in Somerset where my great-grandmother once lived. Ian Whittaker received another Oscar nomination for Anna and the King in 2000 and a nomination for an Emmy Award for the TV movie Into the Storm in 2009.
So, it was rather a waste that Ian spent his time just building little stone walls in the lake to keep the perch alive on our set, but I think he enjoyed the fishing scene as much as I.
You can read more in ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons (1974)’ available online, from Waterstones and your local library. It is suitable for all ages of readers.
Sophie Neville and Suzanna Hamilton confronting the Amazon Pirates on Wildcat Island in Swallows and Amazons
Richard Pilbow says that the fantastic thing about filming Swallows and Amazons was that breakfast was served on location every morning, without fail, sending ‘a wonderful aroma across the set.’ Huge English breakfasts were dished up by John and Margaret, who worked for a location catering company from Pinewood, and greeted the film crew every morning, with bacon and eggs, mushrooms, sausages and tomatoes. And the fried bread was well fried.
It didn’t really matter that we missed breakfast at the Oaklands Guest House in Ambleside. A bacon butty would we placed into my hand as soon as we reached the base camp on Coniston Water. I only wish our guest house had been nearer Peel Island where we spent so much of our time filming.
Daphne Neville and Richard Pilbrow on Peel Island on Coniston Water in 1973 Amazons
I do believe my mother is still eating in the picture above. We all ate hugely to stave off the cold. You can see in the movie how much we enjoyed the iced buns before the Amazons attacked.
I remember the Parley Scene as being of importance to Mrs Ransome, who was still living at the time. Arthur Ransome had died in 1967 but his formidable widow owned the copyright to his books. And she did not want there to be any sexual frison between John and Nancy.
Kit Seymour (Nancy) and Lesley Bennett (Peggy) on Peel Island 1973
Richard Pilbrow had had quite a job of persuading her to give him the rights to the film at all. He know that Tom Maschler, the head of Jonathan Cape, had already had to turn down many movie offers. The Ransomes feared ‘a Disney-ization of the story, a vulgarization.’ They had vocally disliked the 1960s cartoon version of ‘Winnie the Pooh’. Whilst we children loved Disneyfications, we only wanted to bring the book the life.
Neither Arthur Ransome nor his wife, Evgenia, had liked the black and white BBC version of Swallows and Amazons made in 1962 when Susan George played the part of Kitty, rather than Titty. I watched it with Joe Waters at the BBC library in 1983. I reported that it was terribly boring and rather badly made but it was simply of its time, with rather a floral performance from Mrs Walker and comic scenes being given to the burglars. We enjoyed watching the whole series at a weekend of The Arthur Ransome Society. Susan George had such beautiful long plaits.
Molly and Richard Pilbrow in 1973
In his recently published book A Theatre Project, Richard describes how, by vowing to be true to the book, he finally persuaded Mrs Ransome to let him have the film rights. But life wasn’t easy. At the very last minute, just as we were about to start shooting, she put her oar in.
‘She took a violent dislike to the casting of Roger… He was dark haired. “This is outrageous; he has to be fair,” she protested.’ It was too late for Claude Whatham to re-cast. Richard admits that with regret he had to over-ride her.
I was amazed when I heard about it, since all the Swallows in Arthur Ransome’s drawings had very dark hair – as did the real children – the Altounyans, whose father was of Irish/Scottish and Armenian descent.
Altounyan Children – Susie, Taqui, Titty (seated) and Roger
They lived in Aleppo, in Syria where Ernest Altounyan was working in his father’s hospital as a surgeon, and all looked quite tanned in the old photos.
I though that, if anything, Mrs Ransome would have objected to me being too blonde but apparently she wanted ‘an English rose’ to play Titty. David Wood told us that she wanted all the Swallows to have blond hair.
Once the books became well known, the Altounyans didn’t want people identifying the Walkers too closely with their children. There was a bit of an upset after the Ransomes’ offered to adopt Titty after which the dedication to ‘Swallows and Amazons’ was altered and maybe Mrs Ransome took umbridge.
Ransome with the Altounyans
The writer Roger Wardale, said that Arthur Ransome’s intention was to keep the appearance of his characters vague so that any child could easily associate with them and imagine themselves in their place. He originally described the Amazons as having curly hair, but edited this out.
Stephen Grendon playing Roger
Although we loved filming on Peel Island, our real families, who had come up to the Lake District to be with us over half-term, couldn’t watch. This probably made it easier for us to concentrate but must have been disappointing for our friends. Our friends the Selbys, with whom I had learnt to sail, had driven up to Cumbria from Chelmsford and yet probably saw nothing except for the bedraggled crew and me at lunch time.
Jane, Michael, Clare and Lucy Selby on the shore of Coniston Water talking to my sisters, Perry and Tamzin who is holding their dog, Minnie ~ photo: Martin Neville
Other members of the crew had been joined by their children. Brian Doyle noted in his diary that took his daughter Pandora off to Beatrix Potter’s farmhouse Hill Top, travelling in Dad’s car with my sisters Perry and Tamzin.
Although it was good to be on Coniston Water hanging around at the base camp all day would have been terribly dull for them. This, however was about to change. That evening Mum went to help Terry Smith, the Wardrobe Master, sort out costumes to fit the Supporting Artistes. My sisters were about to earn their own breakfasts and be able to watch every shot being made . They were to become Film Extras.
My father has always grabbed a chance to visit the Lake District. As a young man he once took advantage of a military travel warrant to climb the fells and later made it his job to visit the Colfast Button factory in Maryport every month, when he worked for BIP. He would stay at the Pheasant Inn at Bassenthwaite Lake, latching visits onto a weekend, so he could explore Cumbria.
Martin Neville in Cumbria with his dog
This was in the late 1950s. When I came along he took us to stay at Goosemead Farm. We climbed Castle Crag and you only have to glance at the photographs to see how happy I was to be there. We had a sheepdog called Luppy who came too. She was a great character and much loved. Found as a stray before I was born she was still around when I left home to be in Swallows and Amazons.
Sophie Neville aged three in the Lake District with Luppy the sheepdog
Arthur Ransome had been Dad’s favourite author as a boy. He said that he would wait in anticipation for another book to be published. He’d bought me the set of twelve, collecting them from various secondhand shops. I had read seven by the time I was twelve. He set my destiny.
Finding my father Martin Neville the shore of Coniston Water
My father left the dogs at home on 26th May so that he could drive my younger sisters up to join us for two weeks and watch the filming. He found Peel Island on Coniston Water and was there to meet us when the boat came in at the end of the day. My sisters stood smiling on the rocks, dressed for the weather in matching red jerseys, duffle coats and gumboots.
My sisters Perry Neville and Tamzin waiting for me on the shore of Coniston Water
My parents had booked a Bed and Breakfast in Ambleside across the road from the Oaklands Guest House. I immediately noticed a sign declaring that you had to pay 10p to have a bath. ”Ten pee!’ Mum glared at me, furious. ‘Do be quiet, they’ll hear you’. I had moved to share Suzanna’s room, since Mrs Price had a long-standing booking for the back room Mum and I had been using. Her guesthouse was full to bursting since she had students from the Charlotte Mason College of Education lodging with her as well as all of us and her own three children. There were only two bathrooms for the twenty-two people living in the house but there were basins in some of the bedrooms. Nylon sheets were provided but the bedding was apt to slide off in the middle of the night.
My sister with Sten Grendon, Peel Island behind them
My sisters, Tamzin and Perry, who must have been about eight and nine, struck up an instant rapport with Suzanna Hamilton. She asked them to baby-sit her pet slow-worms. These had come up from London with her in a small glass aquarium, which she had put in the fire place in our room. I don’t know what Mrs Price thought. I wasn’t very keen on handling them, and have no idea how they were fed, but Perry was intrigued. Suzanna had also brought her ukulele. She would sit on her bed playing Ain’t She Sweet, Sunny side of the Street, Playing on my Banjo and other Norman Wisdom numbers, fluently and with great gusto. My sisters were entranced. They may have even shared the room with us and the slow-worms. Mum can’t remember.
Dad had already made plans for sailing that first Bank Holiday, when Richard Pilbrow had scheduled a break.
I remember the Hula-hula girls well. Although it was only May they suddenly appeared on what seemed to be a remote, inaccessible island, clad in garish, brightly coloured bikinis – the kind that had little frilly skirts to them. We watched them splash about and swim in complete wonder as, although it was sunny, we knew how cold the water was.
We had seen something of the same kind of savage the day before. I can remember the dismay on the First Assistant’s face when he realised it really was the Saturday of the Bank Holiday. We had had Peel Island to ourselves, indeed it had become ours – our special place, our magical camp, our home. And suddenly it was being invaded by brash women from Manchester who certainly had no respect for anyone making a film. I don’t know how they got out there. they seemed to arrive from no where when we were in the secret harbour, which was suddenly a secret no more. It was their holiday and there was no stopping them or their over-weight and noisy children. They were quite frightening.
The horrific Bank Holiday traffic queues were also unexpected, but my father took us up into the mountains and out on Derwent Water. He must have been trying to teach my mother to sail for decades but she has never begun to get the hang of it.
David Blagden and my mother Daphne Neville in her Donny Osmond cap
Mum was in mourning that weekend as she had watched her favourite hat blow across the water and sink to the bottom of the lake. It was a bulbous pink and white Donny Osmond cap that Claude Whatham had enjoyed wearing on set to amuse us. She was able to find a yellow and white one to replace it but he never liked it as much. Said it didn’t suit his colouring.
You can read more about our adventures making the film here:
Suzanna was ill. ‘I told Claude that it was because she wouldn’t eat anything,’ my mother said. ‘Oo she was difficult.’ But it can’t have just been that. We’d all got cold filming out on the lake in our flimsy costumes and she went down hill from there.
The Producer, Richard Pilbrow, called a ‘unit day off’. It happened to be a precious, sunny Saturday. Sadly for him, it rained the next day, which the crew were originally scheduled to take off.
Producer Richard Pilbrow with Director Claude Whatham
I made the most of it. Mum hardly ever took my sisters and I either shopping or walking when I we were children, but Sten’s mother, Jane Grendon was happy to take us around the craft shops of Ambleside and up into the fells. I am sure it was just what we needed while Mum stayed with Suzanna, and had a snooze herself. She was the better chaperone on location, where she felt happy and relaxed, Jane enjoyed taking us hill walking and encouraged us to sing on mini-bus journeys through the Lake District.
My diary kept during the filming of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in 1973
The norm when filming on location is to work six days a week, resting on Sundays. This quite often has to be changed to a Saturday as some locations, such as the police will only give you clearance for tricky sequences when it’s very quiet. Busy town centres, can only be used on Sundays. We didn’t have any gun fights in Swallows and Amazons (1974) but when I was a location manager myself on Rockcliffe’s Babies I once had to get everyone out on a Sunday morning at 6.00am. We were recording a car chase going the wrong way around the Harrow Road roundabout above Paddington Station in West London with four policemen employed to stop the traffic. We had an actor clinging to the bonnet of the baddies’ car by the windscreen wipers, which were moving.
Dame Virginia McKenna on Windermere in 1973 – photo: Philip Hatfield
I look back through my diary and am so touched. Virginia McKenna was incredibly kind to take such an interest in us, bringing Suzanna strawberries and talking us all to the cinema in Ambleside. We must have watched ‘The Cowboys’, a 1972 movie starring John Wayne. I wonder if she’d met him in Hollywood. Her husband, Bill Travers had appeared in Rawhide with Clint Eastward and starred in Duel at Diablo with James Garner and Sydney Poitier when he’d been given the line, “Apaches seek revenge that way.” Titty would have loved it.
I wrote that Garth brought a pocket chess set. I’m afraid I couldn’t spell properly. This was meant to read Gareth. I have known two Gareths in my life. A Gloucester Old Spot pig, living in North Wales and Gareth Tandy, our third assistant director. His aunt Jessica Tandy was the famous Hollywood actress who had appeared in Alfred Hitchcock dramas such as The Birds. In later life she went on to star in Driving Miss Daisy with Morgan Freeman, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and Nobody’s Fool with Paul Newman, Bruce Willis and Melanie Griffith.
Gareth had acted in all sorts of things as a boy from Oliver Twist to Dr. Findlay’s Casebook. If I’m not mistaken, Swallows and Amazons was his first film as an Assistant Director but he made a career of it, going on to work on amazing movies includingthe original Superman, For Your Eyes Only ~ the Bond film with Roger Moore, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Bourne Identity with Matt Damon, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp, Nanny McPhee, with Emma Thompson and Colin Firth, Johnny English Reborn with Rowan Atkinson and was the First Assistant Director on A Fantastic Fear of Everything.
Gareth signed himself ‘The whipcracker’ in my going-away book. It think this was because it had been his job to get us through costume and make-up and onto the set at the right time but I was left puzzled because he had done this with such charm we had never noticed any whips cracking at all. There must have been. Poor Gareth had been the runner with a walky-talky stopping unwanted traffic, cue-ing various boats and lugging tea urns about, but he did this with good grace and we all loved him. And no wonder, seeing as he’d given us a chess set just because Suzanna was ill in bed.
Sophie Neville with Jane Grendon in 1973 ~ photo: Daphne Neville
The recording of our scene with Captain Flint on Peel Island went smoothly, and Claude Whatham the Director was happy with the result, but my diary reports that a Force 8 gale blew in. This spun the poor production team into a quandary.
Amazons, were all together, not sailing but on Wild Cat Island, with the novelty of working with Captain Flint for the first time. Kit and Lesley had been so patient, waiting day after day for their scenes to come up. They were stuck having lessons with our tutor Mrs Causey in the red double-decker bus most of the time. But the fact that they were on stand-by was helpful to the production manager who had to wrestle with the film schedule and call sheets.
Sophie Neville 