"This book is Ransome at the top of his form." OBSERVER "The book is a record of an uncovenanted voyage, which ended in Holland, of the rain and wind, the darkness and the wild water, the escapes from buoys and from ships crossing in the night, the courage and resource of the children." EVENING STANDARD "Perhaps the best of all ... Just what does happen is told with all the wealth of practical detail and satisfying sense of reality which make Mr Ransome so unfailingly successful." PUNCH "The most exciting of the whole Swallows and Amazons series." NEW STATESMAN "The seventh of the Arthur Ransome books, and I really think it is the best." SUNDAY TIMES

Arthur Ransome was born in 1884. He was in Russia in 1917 and witnessed the Revolution, which he reported for the Manchester Guardian. After escaping to Scandinavia, he settled in the Lake District of England with his Russian wife where, in 1929, he wrote "Swallows and Amazons." Thus began a writing career that has produced some of the best children s literature of all time. "From the Trade Paperback edition.""