You perhaps recall rumours of an unconventional wife. If you are a longtime reader of this newspaper, you may also know that Arthur Ransome was once its correspondent in Moscow. Not to mention a father who was a naval commander and who, asked by an anxious mother whether the children might be allowed to sail to an island in the middle of a large lake and camp on it, on their own, for several days, instantly cabled back: "BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN." ("'What does it mean?' asked Susan. You – or at least I – used to read them avidly during the school holidays, which were obviously nothing like the ones these children were having, and wished like mad that you could have holidays like theirs. Wrote a much-loved if now somewhat dated series of children's classics in the 1930s and 40s in which unusually articulate children with names such as Titty and Roger engage in wholesome outdoor activities such as sailing, camping, eating pemmican and obliging the odd pirate to walk the plank, celebrating in the process the uncomplicated moral values that made Britain Great. W e know Arthur Ransome, don't we? Balding, bespectacled, moustache like the proverbial walrus.
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