Monday 27 July 2015

Swallows and Amazons Forever!

I happened to hear on Radio 4 the other day that a new film of Swallows and Amazons is being made!
There is a film already, which is practically perfect, but it was made in 1974, so maybe this would be a good time to re-visit the story. As they said on the radio, children today almost never get a chance to do what those children did, camping out on Wild Cat Island without adult supervision (as long as they collected the milk from the farm every morning, they were assumed to be okay), sailing on the lake (and no life jackets in 1930!), with their father's permission for the holiday coming in a telegram worded "If not duffers, won't drown."
The island is real - Peel Island on Coniston Water, but the lake is a mixture of Coniston and Windermere.
The children were real, too, or at least very closely modelled on a real family, the Altounyans, who were taught to sail by Arthur Ransome.
According to the Arthur Ransome Trust, there may be one important change to the character names - Titty will become Tatty, to prevent sniggering at the back.

I hope they get it right!

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