Kenneth Grahame | Slightly Foxed literary review magazine

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The Wind in the Willows, [34] 7; [74] 7; The Golden Age; Dream Days, [42] 74

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Voices from the Riverbank

Sue Gee on Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

‘Never read it?’ said the Rat in astonishment. ‘Never read it? Why, my dear fellow, you simply haven’t lived.’ ‘Is it really as good as all that?’ the Mole asked humbly. The Rat pulled up a fireside chair. ‘Sit down, and let me explain.’

Return to Arcadia

Alberto Manguel on Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Several times, during a long life of reading, I’ve been tempted to write an autobiography based solely on the books that have counted for me. Someone once told me that it was customary for a Spanish nobleman to have his coat of arms engraved on his bedhead so that visitors might know who it was who lay in a sleep that might always be his last. Why then not be identified by my bedside favourites, which define and represent me better than any symbolic shield? If I ever indulged in such a vainglorious undertaking, a chapter, an early chapter, would be given over to The Wind in the Willows.

Et in Arcadia

Jonathan Sale on Kenneth Grahame, The Golden Age; Dream Days

My father was an intellectually austere Cambridge academic, so we never had a copy of The Wind in the Willows in the house. No talking toads on this family syllabus, thank you! But Kenneth Grahame did feature on our bookshelves in the shape of two late Victorian bestsellers which would otherwise have escaped my notice, as they have done most readers’ of late: The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898). Neither was turned into a play by A. A. Milne or Alan Bennett, or filmed by Terry Jones. Yet without them there would have been no Toad Hall, no ‘poop-pooping’ motor cars, no escapes from prison and no epic battle with the stoats and weasels.

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