Nostalgia Bulletin

Yesterday, ITV showed the 1974 film, Swallows and Amazons, based on the first in the series of Arthur Ransome books. It was too hot for the kids to be in the garden all day, so I suggested they watch it, hoping they'd enjoy it.

First I should point out that it is a truly terrible film, bearing all the hallmarks of the Children's Film Foundation, and featuring child actors who vanished without trace. Wooden, stilted, miscast, uncommitted, and uncharismatic. The best of them, Suzanna Hamilton, went on to have a respectable career (she's been in a few tellys and was Julia in 1984), and her face is now the most familiar.

That said, my kids (raised on Toy Story, Shrek, and the like) were glued to it, and the oldest enthusiastically picked up Ransome's Winter Holiday when I pulled it (and 4 others, in varying states of repair) off the shelf. So I immediately ordered the original Swallows and Amazons and Swallowdale, which was the first one I read.

As a voracious reader, I consumed the S&A series wholesale - multiple times - and found in them the right level of escapism and nostalgia for an age I never knew (doubtless the Germans have a word for that). And, in spite of the awfulness of the film, and the stilted, awkward, performance of Kit Seymour as Nancy Blackett in particular, I was in love with Nancy Blackett for many years. This love was based on her brilliant character in the books and on the appearance of Ms Seymour in the film. I fell for her when I was 12 - she seemed impossibly older and mature-looking (probably a year too old to be playing Nancy), and fuelled my escapist fantasies for, ooh, shall we say a couple of years?

The books were, naturally, products of their time (how could they not be?), and contain many references to "savages" and "natives" and - later in the series - to stereotypes from all round the world. Even in the 70s, when I first read them, these references may have been considered beyond the pale (*ah hem*) by some, but I've never been one to allow such concerns to spoil my enjoyment of something on its own terms. It's like Alias on TV - preposterous but ridiculously entertaining, and only works as such if all concerned play it straight. To ask the well-travelled Arthur Ransome to be anything other than what he was is to demand the impossible.

Kit Seymour has vanished into the Where Are They Now file, probably glad to forget about her single, unsuccessful foray into acting. She may be a bit nonplussed that the piss-poor film adaptation of S&A is still doing the rounds, its availability down to the popularity of the books rather than artistic merit. Still, she looked great in that red pirate hat, and it's something to show her grandchildren when they pick up the books, as they surely will.