‘Eternal Boy tells me much I didn’t know. It is a very deftly written biography, snappy, thorough and to the point’ Mail on Sunday
Kenneth Grahame sat behind a mahogany desk as Secretary of the Bank of England during the week; at the weekend he retired to the house in the country he shared with his wife Elspeth and son Alistair and took lengthy walks along the Thames in Berkshire. The result of these pastoral wanderings was The Wind in the Willows. Like its remarkable author, it balances maverick tendencies with conservatism. Grahame was an Edwardian pantheist whose work has a timeless appeal, and Matthew Dennison paints a vivid portrait of this strange, shy, awkward figure.
‘A sensitively probing and nuanced portrait that makes sense of the darker character furled in the dreamer’ New Statesman
‘Matthew Dennison skilfully covers the facts, producing a vivid impression of this strange, shy, awkward figure. The result is a highly readable book’ Literary Review
Voices from the Riverbank
‘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...
Read moreReturn to Arcadia
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...
Read moreEt in Arcadia
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...
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