Advent 16

Pigeon Post - Arthur Ransome

I have often been asked how I came to write Swallows and Amazons. The answer is that it had its beginning long,long ago when,as children, my brothers, my sisters and I spent most of our holidays on a farm at the far end of Coniston. We played in or on the lake or on the hills above it finding friends in the farmers and shepherds and charcoal-burners whose smoke rose from the coppice woods along the shore ... I could not help writing it. It almost wrote itself.

So wrote Arthur Ransome in his Author's Note to preface the 1958 editions of the Swallows and Amazons series of novels. I read and re-read all the copies in Erdington Library and own various editions myself. These are children's books written with adult aplomb. They do not patronise. They stimulate and entertain. They exude optimism and humanity. I choose Pigeon Post, my copy of which lives on my bedside table in Anglesey so that I can dip into it whenever I am there and wish to be more fully transported to my innocent age.