Arthur Ransome - Coot Club, The Big Six, etc.

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Re: Arthur Ransome - Coot Club, The Big Six, etc.

Post by Kate Mary »

I had a holiday in Florida in 2004 and we went to a beachside cafe and watched the sun go down across the Gulf of Mexico, it was spectacular and as it finally disappeared everyone applauded. Best free show in town, I guess.

Sorry, wandered off topic again.
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Re: Arthur Ransome - Coot Club, The Big Six, etc.

Post by Moonraker »

Anita Bensoussane wrote:I don't think I've ever heard a round of applause at a cinema!
And I've never heard of a cinema getting bigger!

Glad you enjoyed it, Tony. It is on my wish list to see.
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Re: Arthur Ransome - Coot Club, The Big Six, etc.

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

I received a DVD of Swallows and Amazons (the 2016 version) as a late birthday present and watched it at the weekend. I must say I really enjoyed it. The film-makers have expanded certain aspects of the story to increase the tension and intrigue while still preserving the all-important qualities of freedom, escapism, innocence and make-believe. The children who play Titty (or Tatty!) and Roger are particularly good, coming across as very natural. I was so completely caught up in the excitement of boating, camping, discovering and battling in the Lake District that I didn't want the film to end. If only time had allowed, I could quite happily have restarted the DVD and watched it all over again! I love the Lake District anyway, and wallowing in the scenery was part of the pleasure.
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Re: Arthur Ransome - Coot Club, The Big Six, etc.

Post by sixret »

Although I am not fond of Arthur Ransome's books but I would love to watch the film based on your review.
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Re: Arthur Ransome - Coot Club, The Big Six, etc.

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

I watched the 1974 film of Swallows and Amazons today, not having seen it for a few years. Another very enjoyable film. It's slower-paced than the 2016 one but engaging because of the good child actors (though I'm not keen on the portrayal of Nancy, who doesn't come across as lively or wild). Once again Titty stands out - but then she's also my favourite character in the book as I empathise with her love of literature and her longing to have the island to herself for a while so she can be Robinson Crusoe.

I'm not sure about the casting of Ronald Fraser as Uncle Jim, even though I like him as Mr. Barling in the 1978 Five Go to Smuggler's Top. He makes Uncle Jim seem rather a buffoon.

This adaptation sticks more closely to Arthur Ransome's book than the 2016 film which I watched last week. Since the book is a bit on the tame side for my liking, I welcome the supplementation of the story in the later film. However, the more relaxed atmosphere of the earlier one also appeals. Like the book, both versions conjure up an outdoorsy childhood world of fun, freedom, independence and imagination. Just perfect for escaping from a cold winter's afternoon!
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Swallows and Amazons

Post by Moonraker »

Merged with an older topic.

We saw this new film at the weekend and I couldn't but help wishing that a book such as The Sea of Adventure could be adapted in a similar way. Strictly portrayed in the 30s' era with no updating, it was a charming adaptation of the book.
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Re: Swallows and Amazons

Post by Courtenay »

Moonraker wrote:Strictly portrayed in the 30s' era with no updating...
Apart from Titty becoming Tatty and the additions to the plot?
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Re: Arthur Ransome - Coot Club, The Big Six, etc

Post by Nick »

Anita Bensoussane wrote:I agree that Coot Club is a very enjoyable read as you feel as if you're journeying with the characters, though Winter Holiday is my favourite of the early titles. You've got Pigeon Post and We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea coming up next, Nick - both strong stories which I like a lot. I haven't yet read Secret Water, The Big Six, Missee Lee or Great Northern?
It's taken a while but I've just picked up The Big Six!
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Re: Arthur Ransome - Coot Club, The Big Six, etc.

Post by timv »

'Coot Club' and 'The Big Six' are probably my favourite Ransomes, as I read them shortly before we had a holiday in Norfolk and went to Horning, Wroxham , Potter Heigham etc so I was able to picture what happened where. Ransome does a great travelogue of the Broads, based on his own boating holidays there in the mid-late 1930s - and the description of the boatbuilders' sons' night with the eelman on the river Bure is one of my favourite bits of Broadland Nature description, as you get a real look at what it was like before the tourists took over. (There's also a good guide to the background to the books in BBC journalist Christina Hardyment's book ' AR and Captain Flint's Trunk', where she retraces AR's routes in the 1990s, if you can find a copy.) But I was disappointed when I first went there in the late 1960s to discover that the 'Wilderness' next to the Ferry Inn in Horning had been built on, though you can work out most of the sites in the story!

The other important mid-C20th children's book re-imagining and using genuine sites in N Norfolk, though now rather difficult to find (apart from a recent GGBP reissue), is Mabel Esther Allan's late 1940s 'Margaret Finds a Future', which is set at West Runton on the coast a few miles N of the Broads - where we used to go caravanning. This has a teenage girl whose guardian aunt has died forced to give up her boarding-school as there is no money left for fees and having to relocate to a Tudor mansion near W Runton (based on real-life Felbrigg Hall) run for the National Trust by her other aunt as caretaker.The plot centres on the eponymous Margaret helping the talented daughter of a local farmer to get a place in art college by acquiring a local female artist living in a cottage on the cliffs as her mentor to sponsor her as her parents won't pay the fees and want her to do a 'safer' secretarial course that will get her a better-paid secretarial job. The cliffs are crumbling and In the climax the artist's cottage falls over the cliff in a storm and the girls have a narrow escape - a reminder that crumbling cliffs lost to the sea were a local threat long before climate change.
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Re: Arthur Ransome - Coot Club, The Big Six, etc.

Post by Nick »

timv wrote: The cliffs are crumbling and In the climax the artist's cottage falls over the cliff in a storm and the girls have a narrow escape - a reminder that crumbling cliffs lost to the sea were a local threat long before climate change.
My Grandparents lived in Oulton Broad and we would often visit Dunwich. The grave of a relative stood on a crumbling cliff, getting closer and closer to the edge each year. I thought it actually fell and was recovered but there is some suggestion that it was moved before it fell.

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Re: Arthur Ransome - Coot Club, The Big Six, etc.

Post by Boatbuilder »

And it's still happening around here, Nick, as reported only today.

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Easton Bavents: Farmer's cliff-top cottage demolished
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Re: Swallows and Amazons

Post by Debbie »

Moonraker wrote:Merged with an older topic.

We saw this new film at the weekend and I couldn't but help wishing that a book such as The Sea of Adventure could be adapted in a similar way. Strictly portrayed in the 30s' era with no updating, it was a charming adaptation of the book.
"Strictly" in the 30s era? It was moved to WWII, which could have been 1939, but on the basis it's a summer holiday adventure realistically it has to be 1940 at the earliest. The books were set in the early 1930s.

It wasn't always accurate to the era. According to my son (very loudly-luckily there was only one other family in the cinema who thought it was very funny) the sea plane was 1950s.

And it wasn't accurate to the books. The names were mostly correct, but their characters weren't and the plot did bear some resemblance to the original story, but if you'd renamed the characters totally, and given it a different name I bet no one would have guessed it was based on Swallows and Amazons.

Can you tell I prefer the earlier one? (and so did the children)
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Re: Arthur Ransome - Coot Club, The Big Six, etc.

Post by Judith Crabb »

Back in the 1970s a friend of mine was a teacher in a small coastal township on the Fleurieu Peninsula south of Adelaide. One term they offered the primary children something called electives. The children were offered one afternoon a week where they could choose an activity and after eight weeks had the chance of becoming reasonably proficient in whatever it was they selected. Parents were encouraged to participate - a local artist offered water colour painting, a carpenter some wood work and my friend, who had specialised in Drama at Teacher's College, something she called 'Creative Drama', no scripts or end performance but child -centred, the teacher as facilitator rather than director, definitely on the sidelines but still hard work. She chose a nautical theme, as many of the children looked on school as merely a sad distraction from lives spent mainly on the beach or jetty or climbing cliffs and sandhills or fishing in the river.
What happened was one of the most memorable experiences of her career. She had barely finished explaining to the dozen or so in the group when a small boy, not the usual blonde-haired surfie types who tended to be the leaders at the school, took over. Not only she but the other children were mesmerized as he began a narrative in which they were all to take part, maritime adventures filled with nautical terminology, action-packed. And this is what they did for the rest of the elective. From the carpeted well of the withdrawal room to the spinneys surrounding the school oval the children created their own communal fantasy life.
Sitting in the staff room one day my friend complained that she would need to make a video to convince anyone else about what was happening, which would of course have destroyed the spell. What she couldn't understand was the extraordinary nautical knowledge of the small boy and his impressive story-telling ability. The boy's class teacher was able to explain. The boy was immersed in twelve Puffin paperbacks, reading avidly through Arthur Ransome's 'Swallows and Amazons' series.
I often wonder what happened to that small boy, perhaps a grandfather by now. One thing I am certain of. The power of literature is transformative. To read as that boy read is to be changed forever and to have the capacity to change others may well follow. I wish that Arthur Ransome was alive to read this.
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Re: Arthur Ransome - Coot Club, The Big Six, etc.

Post by pete9012S »

Judith Crabb wrote: The power of literature is transformative. To read as that boy read is to be changed forever..
How I agree with this.
After first reading Five On A Treasure Island as a young boy my outlook on life changed immediately - forever!
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Re: Arthur Ransome - Coot Club, The Big Six, etc.

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Judith Crabb wrote:One thing I am certain of. The power of literature is transformative. To read as that boy read is to be changed forever and to have the capacity to change others may well follow.
pete9012S wrote:How I agree with this.
After first reading Five On A Treasure Island as a young boy my outlook on life changed immediately - forever!
I read your posts with great interest, Judith and Pete. Although I can't recall any one particular book having an immediate effect on me, my general love of reading from an early age certainly widened my horizons and made me see that there are many ways of living and numerous ways of doing things. I'm sure I grew in acceptance, understanding, empathy and imagination as a result.
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