Arthur Ransome
Arthur Michell Ransome (January 18, 1884 – June 3, 1967) was an English author and journalist. He was educated in Windermere and Rugby.
In 1902, Ransome abandoned a chemistry degree to become a publisher's office boy in London. He used this precarious existence to practice writing, producing several minor works before Bohemia in London (1907), a study of London's artistic scene and his first significant book.
An interest in folklore, together with a desire to escape an unhappy first marriage, led Ransome to St. Petersburg, where he was ideally placed to observe and report on the Russian Revolution. He knew many of the leading Bolsheviks, including Lenin, Radek, Trotsky and the latter's secretary, Evgenia Shvelpina. These contacts led to persistent but unproven accusations that he "spied" for both the Bolsheviks and Britain.
Ransome married Evgenia and returned to England in 1924. Settling in the Lake District, he spent the late 1920s as a foreign correspondent and highly-respected angling columnist for the Manchester Guardian, before settling down to write Swallows and Amazons and its successors.
Today Ransome is best known for his Swallows and Amazons series of novels, (1931 - 1947). All remain in print and have been widely translated.
Arthur Ransome died in June 1967 and is buried at Rusland in the Lake District.
“A pigeon a day keeps the natives away.”
“What's hit's history: what's missed's mystery.”
“Only, the beastly Arctic won't freeze,”
“They found, like many explorers before them, that somehow, in their absence, they had got into trouble at home.”
“Swallows and Amazons for-ever!”
“Wild Cat Island”
“Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for what might have been”
“The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage.The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place.”
“You write not for children but for yourself. And if by good fortune children enjoy what you enjoy, why then you are a writer of children's books.”
“The island had come to seem one of those places seen from the train that belong to a life in which we shall never take part.”
“Who would wave a flag to be rescued if they had a desert island of their own? That was the thing that spoilt Robinson Crusoe. In the end he came home. There never ought to be an end.”
“BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN”