Swallows and Amazons

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism.

Arthur Ransome (1884-1967) was an English author and reporter whose father died when he was 13. He served as a foreign correspondent and was based in Russia, Latvia, and Estonia. Although he wasn’t a communist himself, he defended Soviet perspectives in several of his works; his second wife was formerly a secretary to Leon Trotsky. In 2005, Britain’s National Archives released papers proving that Ransome had actually been a spy for England’s M16.

Before turning to children’s books, he wrote biographies, a Russian folktale collection, and a fantasy novel. He also reported for the Manchester Guardian from Russia, Egypt, Sudan, and China.

Ransome shares in his author’s note to Swallows and Amazons that he, his brother, and his sisters spent most of their childhood holidays on a farm near England’s Lake District, with waterways and hills like those described in the novel. The novel grew out of those idyllic memories, along with Ransome’s love of fishing and boating. He based the Walkers—the “Swallows”—on the Altounyans, grandchildren of an old friend, William Collingwood. He met these children, who were Anglo-Armenian, in the Lake District in 1928 and enjoyed watching them learn to sail.