The story of four children who borrow a sailing dinghy and camp on an island in the Lake District, where they meet a couple of high-spirited local girls and the hostile stanger they call Captain Flint, was to change not only 'the course of children's literature', as one critic put it, but also the life of its author, Arthur Ransome.

Intruducing Arthur Ransome.

My first debt is to my publisher David Joy for asking me if I would like to produce one more book about Arthur Ransome, so enabling me to realise a long-standing dream to publish a selection of colour photographs of places mentioned in the Swallows and Amazons canon.

Acknowledgements.

The entry in Arthur Ransome's diary for 24th March 1929 says simply, 'Started S & A.'

Chapter One - Youthful Ambition.