The Secret Life of Books Series 2
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- Episode
- Swallows and Amazons
- Broadcast Info
- 2015 (29 mins)
- Description
- First published in 1930 Swallows and Amazons recounts the adventures of the Walker and Blackett children and their idyllic summer holiday camping and sailing in an imaginary Lake District landscape; encountering pirates and finding buried treasure.
Journalist and Swallows and Amazons devotee John Sergeant first read Arthur Ransome’s classic as a boy and now travels to the Lakes to walk and sail in the footsteps of Ransome’s intrepid heroes, recapturing the magic of the story and uncovering the secrets behind its pages. From Bank Ground Farm on the banks of Coniston Water where the Walker children holiday with their mother, to the hamlet of Nibthwaite and Peel Island where Ransome himself holidayed as a boy, and then to Low Ludderburn, the remote cottage and barn near Windermere where Ransome wrote his much-loved tale.
A writer himself, John is intrigued by the writing process and revels in turning the pages of the only known manuscript of the book, revealing key changes to the narrative more familiar to us today. But Arthur Ransome was not just a children’s author, he was also a globetrotting journalist. John travels to Leeds University and delves into Ransome’s own trunk to unlock his dark past of his time as a war correspondent during the Russian Revolution that led to accusations of him being a spy.
As John discovers, Swallows and Amazons is not only indelibly linked to the landscape Ransome so beautifully describes it captures the spirit of an imperial age when children were encouraged to be self-sufficient and independent. After its success Ransome wrote a further eleven novels, a series that now stands as part of a trajectory of children’s adventure literature and whose legacy can be seen both in the milieu and in the moral and upstanding virtues it embodies. Swallows and Amazons forever! - Genre
- Arts; Literature; Writing; History
How to cite this record
The Open University, "The Secret Life of Books Series 2". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/219316 (Accessed 23 Nov 2025)