Available Formats
The Picts and the Martyrs: or Not Welcome At All
By (Author) Arthur Ransome
Penguin Random House Children's UK
Red Fox
4th January 2002
6th September 2001
United Kingdom
Children
Fiction
823.912
Paperback
320
Width 130mm, Height 198mm, Spine 19mm
223g
A timeless classic, beautifully rejacketed. One of twelve Arthur Ransome titles reissued this month The dreaded Great Aunt has invited herself to stay with Nancy and Peggy just as their friends Dick and Dorothea arrive for the Summer holiday. Nancy and Peggy have to become Martyrs, wearing dresses and reading poetry (but breaking out at night), while Dick and Dorothea become Picts, secret inhabitants of the country who must never let themselves be seen. It's a desperate gamble to keep everyone out of trouble - but can it possibly work against the eagle eyes of the fearsome Great Aunt
Stands out in triumph. It is firm, intelligent, in tune with twentieth-century mentality and well-written * Times Literary Supplement *
Quite up to the best standards of its predecessors, and to all old Ransome devotees the return to the lake of the first novels gives an added pleasure * Glasgow Herald *
Stands out in triumph * Times Literary Supplement *
Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in l884 and went to school at Rugby. He was in Russia in l917, and witnessed the Revolution, which he reported for the Manchester Guardian. After escaping to Scandinavia, he settled in the Lake District with his Russian wife where, in l929, he wrote Swallows and Amazons. And so began a writing career which has produced some of the real children's treasures of all time. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book, Pigeon Post.