Arthur Ransome is most famous as the author of Swallows & Amazons but he was also a literary critic a foreign correspondent a fisherman & a sailor. The World of Arthur Ransome explores the places that shaped the writer. It tells the story of his childhood his friendships his two wives & daughter. It also describes how & where he wrote each of his twelve classic children's books & the people & books that inspired them. There is no doubt that Ransome's spiritual home was the ' Lake in the North' where he set five of his twelve iconic books for children. He holidayed on the banks of Coniston Water as a boy & camped there as a young man but his most important & longest-lasting home was Low Ludderburn on the slopes of Cartmel Fell & close to Lake Windermere. There he wrote Swallows & Amazons & three of its sequels. Another four of his books were set in East Anglia where he moved so that he could sail on the Norfolk Broads & the east coast rivers around Pin Mill. Here shipboard domestic arrangements came to the fore: all the cabins of his boats were equipped with writing desks & a bookcase. He was never happier than when writing while afloat in his favourite little yacht the Nancy Blackett immortalized as Goblin in We Didn't Mean to Go To Sea. With a keen & affectionate eye Christina Hardyment places this most loved of English authors in the settings which so richly define his work.