I suppose I must have read it at some point in my childhood. I was, after all, a classically nerdy bookworm. But, to be honest, I have little or no recollection of Swallows and Amazons.

I’m sure that must amount to close to criminal admission, especially in Cumbria.

But when I try to call the book to mind, I get Wind in the Willows and sometimes The Borrowers Afloat… and that can’t be right.

Perhaps it was that, at the time, I simply took little interest in Arthur Ransome’s classic tale of jolly, adventurous youngsters enjoying a stereotypically English summer.

I was never a messing about in boats, tree-climbing, fish-catching, sheep-worrying type.

All in all, I preferred to read a book… though, obviously not his.

Did those children enjoy lashings of ginger beer during their youthful expeditions?


Anne Pickles Or was that The Famous Five or maybe The Secret Seven? Beats me. All those stories now meld into one.

So, now that a new film of the much-loved children’s story is stirring up a bit of a storm of controversy – or rippling the surface of an otherwise perfectly peaceful lake, anyway – I’m at a disadvantage.

I mean I get the fuss about changing Titty’s name to Tatty, which seems unnecessarily daft. But as for the rest… haven’t a clue.

There’s apparently an added strand to the original story I fail to recall. It’s said to involve a Russian-spy plot.

Creative licence has been employed in the making of the new film to give it “more peril”.

As if children setting out in a little boat, unaccompanied by an adult and without full and detailed health and safety risk-assessment weren’t perilous enough.

But Ransome, it turns out, had been an MI6 agent who had fallen in love with Trotsky’s secretary on one of his many trips to Russia.

So, any creativity would seem to be up for grabs. Or so goes the screenwriter’s justification of intrigue.

Will today’s youngsters understand any of that?

Will they even want to watch the film? Hard to tell.

They’re due back at school shortly, having enjoyed precious little opportunity for long sun-drenched summer days of wild adventure in boats.

And anyway, they’ve had the added complication of screens – phones, tablets, laptops – to contend with.

And no… I don’t mean their own.

Dragging parents away from what has become an epidemic of digital diarrhoea is no mean feat for a child with other things on his or her mind.

“Stay there, darling and look as though you’re having fun. This one’s for Facebook.”

“But mum, it’s raining, I’m cold and I want to go home.”

“Not yet. Think of all those Likes. And don’t eat any chips until I’ve taken their picture. This could go viral.”

If only life was always so enjoyable as it’s contrived to appear to a distant, largely anonymous audience.

Perhaps Arthur Ransome, in common with most other storytellers – spies or not – knew that too, when he wrote his book 80 years ago.

Everybody’s a storyteller now.

Child psychologists need well lose sleep about children being addicted to their smart phones and iPads. It’s the mums and dads I worry about.

But, be that as it may, a Swallows and Amazons look-back to days when childhood adventure was allowed without restriction of social media compliance, might well be worth a sample – albeit a retrospective one.

Who knows, it might even start a renewed trend for fresh air, limitless imagination, picnics, boats, tree-climbing and lashings of ginger beer – with no need to pose for pictures.

The film opens in cinemas today and since I’m still utterly lost, plot-wise, I’ll need to get cracking.

In order to offer my customary grumble – “Not a patch on the book” – some speed-reading is clearly in order.

Go on. Give it a try. Take the children and show them how fun used to be done before wifi.

And while you’re at it, take a screen-grab of the movie – popcorn included – in the dark, for posting. You know it makes sense… it could well go viral.