The Duke of Edinburgh is reputed to have spoken of a ‘Swallows and Amazons spirit’ or ‘the spirit of Swallows and Amazons’. The books are certainly loved by many.
I was interviewed by the antiques expert Marc Allum who reckoned my collection of memorabilia from the 1974 film would be worth about £5,000. You can read more about this here. I have a feeling this episode recorded at Windermere Jetty might be repeated someday soon.
Rupert Maas the art expert on BBC Antiques Roadshow, who watched the film as a boy, said that the Arthur Ransome books inspired him to sail across the Atlantic. He valued Swallow, the dinghy we used in the movie at more than £10,000.
Salman Rushdie told of arriving at an English public school having learned about England from Arthur Ransome’s ‘Swallows and Amazons’ (Radio 4’s ‘This Cultural Life’ broadcast on 22nd June 2024.) He told the Sunday Times, ‘If I was going to be posh, I’d say the book that made me a reader was Alice in Wonderland. But the real truth is Swallows and Amazons. Somehow in Bombay, all those Arthur Ransome books showed up in the local bookstore. I loved the enormous personal freedom the children had. They had boats and could go sailing in the Lake District with no grown-ups in sight. They could have adventures on islands with pirates. I was a child of the same age as these children and I was very attracted to this lifestyle of these kids messing about in boats.’ He moved to the UK at the age of twelve to go to boarding school. When speaking on Desert Island Discs he said he was following “some spirit of adventure, I guess. I remember reading the Swallows and Amazons books. The amount of personal freedom those children had, I thought it was sensational.” I wonder what influence the books had on his writing? Does he mention any of Arthur Ransome’s books in his classic children’s novel ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’?
Jeffrey Archer was inspired by the book saying it was one he would take to a desert island. “I love Swallows and Amazons because it has the sense of children working together. It was very moral in that it made clear that individuals don’t matter.” (The Independent) “Swallows And Amazons was unputdownable – though I did not try to emulate their adventures.” (My Weekly) “It’s a story with enduring appeal” (The Express)
Kate Adie, the News correspondent, who, on ‘I’ve never seen Star Wars’ (BBC Radio 4 ), gave ‘Swallows and Amazons’ 10/10 a few years ago.
Labi Siffre, the singer-songwriter said on Great Lives that Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons books taught him responsibility and a morality that shaped and influenced his life.
Jane Garvey, of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, chose We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea as one of her five favorite books. “I’ve no idea why I loved this book so much, but I know I did. It’s one of the Swallows and Amazons series, and involves an accidental trip to Belgium. I found it absolutely hair-raising – I’m not exactly intrepid myself so it probably petrified me.” (The Week)
David Bellamy, the botanist and television presenter who lectured at my university ‘… said he was inspired in his love of nature as a boy by the books of Sir (sic) Arthur Ransome, author of Swallows and Amazons. “By the time I was 14 I’d read all his books and saved up so that I could go to the Lake District to camp and learn to sail. It tipped me towards natural history.”’ The Guardian
Norman Willis, former General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress and president of the European Union TUC, became President of The Arthur Ransome Society. It is still going from strength to strength.
AA Gill, the British journalist said, “Swallows and Amazons:- Being dyslexic, I started reading late and this was the first book without pictures that I read on my own. My Grandmother gave it to me for Christmas when I was nine. It took me about three months to read but I was gripped.”
Adam Hart-Davis, the cycling TV presenter, actually met Arthur Ransome as a boy. He has often spoken at The Arthur Ransome Society’s events and has written a number of non-fiction books on what the past has done for us.
Benjamin Britten who was born in Lowestoft had a well known love of Swallows and Amazons and was keen to base a children’s opera on one of the books. ‘So desperate was he for Ransome’s We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea that at one point he swapped his composition draft of the newly completed cantata Saint Nicolas for a copy of the book!’ BrittenPears Arts
Hayao Miyazaki, hailed as ‘the animation legend’ lists Swallows and Amazons in his Top 50 Favourite Children’s Books.
The late actor Julian Sands claimed to have a Swallows and Amazons childhood and Dame Judi Dench also claimed this in her audio book on Shakespeare.
Dick Strawbridge, and Dr Alice Roberts the anthropologist, presented a documentary devoted to the landscapes that inspired Ransome as an author in both the Lake District and East Anglia, which was repeated on television recently. I think Dick Strawbridge may have stumbled on the drystone remains of the the charcoal burners’ hut that we used in the original film, without knowing it. You can watch their explorations here:
There are more enthusiasts listed in the previous post here.
You can read more about Oscar winners, actors and other well known people associated with the original film of Swallows and Amazons here:
Sophie Neville 