toad_oftoadhall
Well-Known Member
'Kin hell. I remember being made to watch that in English at school. Had to sprint home from the bus to have a w@nk.
...and the Romeo and Juliet film where you catch a brief glance at Juliet's titties.
Arthur Mitchell Ransome
- Thread starter dylanwinter
- Start date
'Kin hell. I remember being made to watch that in English at school. Had to sprint home from the bus to have a w@nk.
...and the Romeo and Juliet film where you catch a brief glance at Juliet's titties.
Ubergeekian
Well-Known Member
Two of my most treasured possessions are my father's copies of "S&A" and "WDMtGtS", bought for him in the mid 30's by his father, a printer for the Co-Op. He borrowed th erest from the library - you don't and didn't have to buy books to read 'em!
Ubergeekian
Well-Known Member
I live in Scotland, dammit. It's cold, dark, wet and windy and my nice new boat is three hundred miles away. I'm disbloodygruntled and I don't see why anyone else should be happy. So there.
Anyway, I'm not the one who started a thread to piss over a popular and inspiring author.
JimC
Well-Known Member
Class Warriors
I agree with you but I believe it was Dylan himself who started it.
People wanting to defend the author and his books from this accusation inevitably ended up having to write about class.
I agree with you but I believe it was Dylan himself who started it.
People wanting to defend the author and his books from this accusation inevitably ended up having to write about class.
jdc
Well-Known Member
Something I didn't see mentioned yet about AR was that he eloped with Trotsky's secretary, while still married to a respectable wife back in England. Then built his own boat in Riga and had a combination shakedown/honeymoon cruise around the baltic in filthy end-of-season weather. Apparently his inamorata was enourmous, towering over him and as wide as she was tall.
What a man!
What a man!
Cliveshep
Well-Known Member
I loved his books as a kid, bought an entire set when in my twenties, and in my sixties still love them, and the films although they do not portray quite what the imagination can conjure up. I have also encouraged my own kids to read them, not that they are great readers with computers as alternatives. They offer an insight into a time when all adults were not paedophiles or regarded as a threat to children as presented by the ridiculous nanny state we now live in and are set in a time with many good qualities about society.
I also found Michael Green, and The Art of Coarse Sailing, cruising, golf, rugby etc, and bought the whole set of those, the image of Michael up to mid thigh on Breydon water pretending he was a navigation marker still makes me smile, as do the stories of the cat that abandoned ship, Beaver the bearded skipper from hell, and the way no-one on the Broads ever wanted to hire Beaver a boat due to the damage he did to them.
Ah, the stuff of dreams!
I also found Michael Green, and The Art of Coarse Sailing, cruising, golf, rugby etc, and bought the whole set of those, the image of Michael up to mid thigh on Breydon water pretending he was a navigation marker still makes me smile, as do the stories of the cat that abandoned ship, Beaver the bearded skipper from hell, and the way no-one on the Broads ever wanted to hire Beaver a boat due to the damage he did to them.
Ah, the stuff of dreams!
Lakesailor
Well-Known Member
JDC. I think she was perhaps not as huge as you imagine.
There are some fantastic pictures of AR, his wife and his boats at this site
There are some fantastic pictures of AR, his wife and his boats at this site
JimC
Well-Known Member
Another Good Read
A bit off topic here but people who enjoy Arthur Ransome's books and/or Dylan Winter's videos would probably also enjoy "The Strange Voyage of Jack de Crow" by A.J. Mackinnon.
I enjoyed this the most of any cruising yarn I have ever read. There are some similarities with Dylan's narrative: Mackinnon's boat originated with the same left wing newspaper, it was a mirror dinghy with the customary red sail, and everything was done on a shoestring with no sponsorship etc. In this narrative there is no criticism of other authors and not a word of political or class angst all the way from North Wales to the Black Sea. It emulates Ransome in having maps inside the end-covers and being illustrated by the author's own sketches.
My copy cost £12.95 which I was pleased to find was within my means as a pensioner.
A bit off topic here but people who enjoy Arthur Ransome's books and/or Dylan Winter's videos would probably also enjoy "The Strange Voyage of Jack de Crow" by A.J. Mackinnon.
I enjoyed this the most of any cruising yarn I have ever read. There are some similarities with Dylan's narrative: Mackinnon's boat originated with the same left wing newspaper, it was a mirror dinghy with the customary red sail, and everything was done on a shoestring with no sponsorship etc. In this narrative there is no criticism of other authors and not a word of political or class angst all the way from North Wales to the Black Sea. It emulates Ransome in having maps inside the end-covers and being illustrated by the author's own sketches.
My copy cost £12.95 which I was pleased to find was within my means as a pensioner.
clouty
Well-Known Member
Enid was definitely wet, but as to AT - well I was a middle class kid.
Not that that was so great
Dylan, check out "Missie Lee"(with your nine year old hat on) to understand the genre, here in 2010, nearly.
"We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea" - classic
Reading list. Eat 'em up. Turned a lot of us on.
Not that that was so great
Dylan, check out "Missie Lee"(with your nine year old hat on) to understand the genre, here in 2010, nearly.
"We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea" - classic
Reading list. Eat 'em up. Turned a lot of us on.
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Ubergeekian
Well-Known Member
One of my other top favourite sailing books. That's the way to do it!
Poignard
Well-Known Member
Eventually "Racundra" was bought by Adlard Cole and it had to be renamed as a condition of sale. He and his new wife had their honeymoon sailing it back from Riga to England. A voyage described in his book "Close Hauled". A good read, I reckon.
jcpa
Well-Known Member
Swallows and Amazons did it for me
While I understand Dylan's views - and I suspect I'm now rather left of him politically - I must disagree.
From my point of view, I was a middle class kid (son of doctor and ex-nurse house mother) at a grammar school (or maybe its prep school – I can’t remember – sometime in the early 1960s), with several compulsory reading books to finish each term (Dickens, Scott, RLStephenson, Shakespeare, etc) – Oh, and we had Latin lessons too! I hated those books (and Latin). I seldom finished them, and had to bluff it out in the class discussions or tests.
My mother, in a last ditch attempt to get her son reading anything other than Eagle (or Beano if I could clandestinely get hold of a copy) put Swallows and Amazons my way and it worked. I thoroughly enjoyed reading all those books (the details are hazy now – but this thread is bringing much of it back). After AR, I quickly progressed through war books (Bader, Gibson, etc) and on to Ian Flemming – Bond!
AR may have been slow (and my kids wouldn’t read them), but by God they were faster than Dickens, Kingsley, etc. He didn’t get me sailing, that came later in my sport-mad teens when crewing in competitive racing dinghies (GPs, Merlins, FDs, etc). I only got back to reading ‘Classics’ in my 40s, when I discovered how funny Austen is, and how much better written Dickens is than almost all the modern novels. I now enjoy Dickens (but I only read on holidays, so it can take two years to finish one).
Why am I posting all this? Just to say the AR books were right for me when I read them – they got my imagination going - when the serious stuff the school were forcing into me was just tedious. I was sad my kids wouldn’t read them, but I certainly wouldn’t try to force anyone to read any book they weren’t ready for.
Oh and Dylan, your videos are inspirational too. Living inland, and not really having sailed for 40 years, but approaching retirement, they are encouraging me to get a small cruiser and sail round the UK myself. I was thinking NW Scotland would be the best bit, but your videos are showing the muddy backwaters of the SE have splendid sights too. I've just got to find the affordable boat and I'll be off!
While I understand Dylan's views - and I suspect I'm now rather left of him politically - I must disagree.
From my point of view, I was a middle class kid (son of doctor and ex-nurse house mother) at a grammar school (or maybe its prep school – I can’t remember – sometime in the early 1960s), with several compulsory reading books to finish each term (Dickens, Scott, RLStephenson, Shakespeare, etc) – Oh, and we had Latin lessons too! I hated those books (and Latin). I seldom finished them, and had to bluff it out in the class discussions or tests.
My mother, in a last ditch attempt to get her son reading anything other than Eagle (or Beano if I could clandestinely get hold of a copy) put Swallows and Amazons my way and it worked. I thoroughly enjoyed reading all those books (the details are hazy now – but this thread is bringing much of it back). After AR, I quickly progressed through war books (Bader, Gibson, etc) and on to Ian Flemming – Bond!
AR may have been slow (and my kids wouldn’t read them), but by God they were faster than Dickens, Kingsley, etc. He didn’t get me sailing, that came later in my sport-mad teens when crewing in competitive racing dinghies (GPs, Merlins, FDs, etc). I only got back to reading ‘Classics’ in my 40s, when I discovered how funny Austen is, and how much better written Dickens is than almost all the modern novels. I now enjoy Dickens (but I only read on holidays, so it can take two years to finish one).
Why am I posting all this? Just to say the AR books were right for me when I read them – they got my imagination going - when the serious stuff the school were forcing into me was just tedious. I was sad my kids wouldn’t read them, but I certainly wouldn’t try to force anyone to read any book they weren’t ready for.
Oh and Dylan, your videos are inspirational too. Living inland, and not really having sailed for 40 years, but approaching retirement, they are encouraging me to get a small cruiser and sail round the UK myself. I was thinking NW Scotland would be the best bit, but your videos are showing the muddy backwaters of the SE have splendid sights too. I've just got to find the affordable boat and I'll be off!
dylanwinter
Well-Known Member
buy a boat now time is running out - and apaologies to AR
"your videos are showing the muddy backwaters of the SE have splendid sights too. I've just got to find the affordable boat and I'll be off! "
jcpa thanks for kind words - buy a boat now - better to own the boat you can afford now rather than waste all that sailing time dreaming about the the one you want. The view from my cockpit is as good as any £20,000 yacht - and its often better.
also, as you get older the full crouchuing headroom available in most small yachts gets tougher and tougher.
And I would like to apologise to the AR lovers of this forum - I will be much nicer to him as I explore the Red Sea (Horsey Mere), Witch's Quay (Kirby Quay) and the Secret Water (Hamford) itself over the next couple of keep turning lefts
Dylan
"your videos are showing the muddy backwaters of the SE have splendid sights too. I've just got to find the affordable boat and I'll be off! "
jcpa thanks for kind words - buy a boat now - better to own the boat you can afford now rather than waste all that sailing time dreaming about the the one you want. The view from my cockpit is as good as any £20,000 yacht - and its often better.
also, as you get older the full crouchuing headroom available in most small yachts gets tougher and tougher.
And I would like to apologise to the AR lovers of this forum - I will be much nicer to him as I explore the Red Sea (Horsey Mere), Witch's Quay (Kirby Quay) and the Secret Water (Hamford) itself over the next couple of keep turning lefts
Dylan
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PetiteFleur
Well-Known Member
I have not read all the posts so this may already been mentioned. My wife and I started reading Swallows & Amazons to our two grandchildren (10 &11)when on our summer cruise with them last year and we had to abandon it - it was terribly longwinded and frankly, boring.... not as how I remembered it when reading it in my youth. This year we read them a modern story which had links with Nelson and they loved it(and so did we!), sorry I can't remember the name of the book, but it was a cracking yarn.
PS - they still like us to read them a bedtime story whenever they stay with us for a few days even as they get older - quite nice really.
PS - they still like us to read them a bedtime story whenever they stay with us for a few days even as they get older - quite nice really.
Talbot
Well-Known Member
Literary quality is also not a guarantee of a good story. Far too many of the books that win literary prizes are turgid door stops.
However,
Some books that are written as fiction, turn out to be historical commentary as well. I believe that AR and his stories should be read as such as well. After all in this day and age any parents allowing their young teen and sub teen to do some of the things in the books, (they were allowed and even encouraged then) would probably be vilified and prosecuted by todays control freaks.
AntarcticPilot
Well-Known Member
If Swallows and Amazons, Roger was probably about 6, if you work it out, and "John" was probably only about 11 or 12!
Ubergeekian
Well-Known Member
There is an interesting article on this at http://valhalla.k12.ny.us/kensico/ar/chars.html in which the ages in Swallows and Amazons are given as John 12, Susan 10 1/2, Titty 8 1/2, Roger 7.
That gives John as 14 when he (accidentally) skippered Goblin across the North Sea. When Laura Dekker sailed to Lowestoft she was 13 - and detained by Social Services, who clearly don't have much to do with their time.
doug748
Well-Known Member
I loved Enid Blyton as a nipper, could not get enough of it. I suspect I would find it a bit slow now.
To lambaste Ransome because "He was a toff writing about toffs" is from the same school of litrary criticism as:
Can't STAND:
Ibsen - Dad was a Count (I said Count) = nob
Churchill - Ditto - nob
Naipaul - Ethnic
Angelou - Female and Ethnic
W H Davies - Tramp and uniped
Lawrence - Common
I told a mate that I thought Blackrobe was a Great book. He won't read it because: "It seems to be all about Indians"
Mind you I am just as bad. John Mortimer drives me bonkers, along with the rest of the left wing liberal literati drips like Alan Bennett - and that bugger is a Yorkshireman to boot.
Best Wishes for Christmas.
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Ubergeekian
Well-Known Member
Me too. Rumpole is execrably badly written and champagne socialists like Mortimer really annoy me.
dur
Well-Known Member
The Class System
If only books had a rating system printed on the cover. It could be quite simple using the following formula
(L-B) X B X 1/2B / 94
Where L is the class of the author (1 is working class 9 is royalty) and B is the class of the reader.
If the answer is zero you are safe to read. If it is negative you might need to look down your nose and vice versa if it is positive. The further from zero, the more unacceptable the book will be.
(I might have that wrong, maffs never a strong point.)
Anyway I enjoyed Biggles too. Duck!
If only books had a rating system printed on the cover. It could be quite simple using the following formula
(L-B) X B X 1/2B / 94
Where L is the class of the author (1 is working class 9 is royalty) and B is the class of the reader.
If the answer is zero you are safe to read. If it is negative you might need to look down your nose and vice versa if it is positive. The further from zero, the more unacceptable the book will be.
(I might have that wrong, maffs never a strong point.)
Anyway I enjoyed Biggles too. Duck!