The Walker children – also known as Captain John, Mate Susan, Able-Seaman Titty, and Ship’s Boy Roger – set sail on the Swallow and head for Wild Cat Island. There they camp under open skies, swim in clear water and go fishing for their dinner. But their days are disturbed by the Blackett sisters, the fierce Amazon pirates. The Swallows and Amazons decide to battle it out, and so begins a summer of unforgettable discoveries and incredible adventures.
Swallows and Amazons for Ever!
JIM RING
Swallows and Amazons runs in the family. My mother was growing up in the Thirties when Ransome’s series was first published. After the first volume in 1930 – Swallows and Amazons itself – she awaited with ever greater anticipation the books that followed year after year. Her father would read them aloud to her, to her sister and – later – to their brother. In the Fifties my mother in turn read them to me and to my older siblings. We were enchanted. Later the books proved one of the first things my wife and I discovered we had in common. Now I am reading them to our own children. So they are read, generation after generation, by fathers and mothers to sons and daughters all over the world. Yet the central concept of the books is of children gloriously unencumbered by their parents . . .
Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 18, Summer 2008
Swallows and Amazons for Ever!
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