Arthur Ransome

Arthur Michell Ransome (18 January 1884 – 3 June 1967) was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. The entire series remains in print, and Swallows and Amazons is the basis for a tourist industry around Windermere and Coniston Water, the two lakes Ransome adapted as his fictional North Country lake.

He also wrote about the literary life of London, and about Russia before, during, and after the revolutions of 1917. His connection with the leaders of the Revolution led to him providing information to the Secret Intelligence Service, while he was also suspected by MI5 of being a Soviet spy. The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis, Jonathan Cape, 1976

The Life of Arthur Ransome, by Hugh Brogan, Jonathan Cape, 1984

Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint's Trunk, by Christina Hardyment, Jonathan Cape, 1984

Nancy Blackett: Under Sail with Arthur Ransome, by Roger Wardale, Jonathan Cape, 1991, ISBN 0-224-02773-5

Signalling from Mars, The Letters of Arthur Ransome, edited by Hugh Brogan, Jonathan Cape, 1997

Blood Red Snow White, by Marcus Sedgwick, Orion Children's Books, 2007 – historical fiction about Ransome in Russia during the revolution

The Last Englishman: the Double Life of Arthur Ransome, by Roland Chambers, Faber & Faber, 2009, ISBN 0-571-22261-7

The World of Arthur Ransome, by Christina Hardyment, Frances Lincoln, 2012 (ISBN 9780711232976)

Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot by Giles Milton, Sceptre, 2013. ISBN 978 1 444 73702 8