Images of Sophie Neville – Sophie Neville

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:

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 series Kidnapped. 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.

Sophie Neville in 'Kidnapped' — 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 little boy playing Gerald Durrell getting a kiss from Brian Blessed who played Spiro — 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 speaking about Swallows and Amazons at Kendal cinema — 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.

People often ask how making the original film of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ influenced my life. What struck me when I last saw the 1974 film trailer on Amazon Prime was that it begins with Titty saying, ‘The endless trek, through the Sahara Desert…’ In 1985, I did just that, crossing the Sahara on an expedition led by Charlie Mayhew, now CEO of the charity TUSK. I made my first documentary on the aid projects we worked on when we eventually reached Kenya. Had uttering those lines when I was little influenced my decision to drive from London to Johannesburg?

Sophie Neville on an endless trek, crossing the Sahara Desert – photo James Lindsay

People who know Arthur Ransome’s books are able to point out where the original film of Swallows and Amazons made mistakes. Janet Mearns noted that the Swallows ‘certainly didn’t take enamel mugs’ camping, ‘because they took extra in case of breakages.’ I had never noticed!

Andrew Clayton pointed out that, ‘Someone (Hugh Brogan?) Said that John was the lad he wanted to be. Titty, while based on an original person, carries some of his dreams and literary interests.’

Making a film while crossing the Sahara Desert in 1985

Peter Wright, former chairman of The Arthur Ransome Society, noticed that I sang ‘Adieu and Farewell’ instead of ‘Farewell and Adieu to you fair Spanish Ladies’ as the Swallows sailed from the jetty below Holly Howe. I now realize this mistake may have been due to the influence of ‘The Sound of Music’, which was the first movie I ever saw in the cinema. Captivated by the big screen at the age of four, I must have had the lyrics – ‘So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu, Adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu,’ imprinted on my brain.

I didn’t sing very well, but one of the secrets to the integrity of the film was that there was no vanity. None of us sought to further ourselves. Self promotion was an unknown concept. We had no personal agenda. We were not there for the money or any reason other than to live out the life portrayed in the books. All of us spurned the publicity and still find it surreal.

Someone also said how much they would have loved to live through a scene from ‘Swallows and Amazons’. We were fortunate enough to live through an abridged version of the book, which is what my parents hoped. It must have been one reason why my headmistress let me take a term off school to appear in the film.

Sophie Neville writing letters from Africa with the author Rebecca Hunter

Since then I went on to lead a ‘Swallows and Amazons’ style life, exploring unchartered territory, which isn’t always easy, I was touched when a fan of the books wrote:

‘Arthur Ransome has helped me through some very difficult times – when you are at your wits end to know what to do or where to turn, it is so refreshing to return to the Lake, or Norfolk, to a peace and tranquillity where you can forget your problems and just enjoy the adventures of the Swallows, Amazons, D’s, Coots, wherever you happen to be.’

Sophie Neville in a vehicle that we submerged in Moremi. The shoes were later stolen in Mosambique, the Toyota in Johannesburg ~ photo: Rebecca Hunter

Nigel H Seymour wrote, ‘…every-time I put the ‘Swallow’s and Amazon’s film on, I’m transported into another dimension and another time. it’s so very refreshingly simple and innocent, it radiates with a romanticism and happiness which has sadly been lost now for ever, but luckily we have the film and we still have ‘You’….. to keep the memory alive!’