Fascinating stuff. I must admit I hadn't heard of Helen Cresswell before, and I'd missed the TV series of Moondial (too old). Now I'm intrigued.
Quickly picking up on your aside about Arthur Ransome; I'm just wondering how he'd have felt about your phrase 'fantasy Lakeland'. It's certainly a re-imagined landscape, but very strongly grounded in the real one, with many places being reproduced essentially as they were, with only the names changed: 'Rio' is unmistakably Bowness, for example. But then the same seems to be true of Crewell's Llangolly/Llandudno, albeit it is the backdrop for a fantasy of time-travel.
I think the point I was trying to make is that Ransome's Lakeland is often an amalgam (probably a better word than fantasy now I think about it) of different locations rearranged as neccesary to suit the needs of the plot, whereas Belton is an exact piece of mapping. He'd agree I think, that Windermere and Coniston are both in Swallows and Amazons for instance.
Up The Pier I suspect is pretty faithful to 1970s Llandudno but I can't really check!
Yes, I would agree with amalgam. It’s the specific connotations of the word ‘fantasy’ that I was uneasy with. Especially as two of Ransome’s books, Peter Duck and Missee Lee, have much stronger claims to be considered fantasies. Though even here, not in the sense that there’s anything magical involved.
I'm another Helen Cresswell fan - but for the Bagthorpe saga which I adored. HC seems to have written very different styles of books: the Bagthorpes were irreverent, witty comedy with no hint of the supernatural, while a lot of her other books were full of magic and slightly creepy. We had a few read aloud to us at school - e.g. The Piemakers - but I never sought them out, but your piece has made me want to explore this side of Cresswell's work.
Like a lot of HC's work they were also a TV series – I didn't like it, but by then I had fixed ideas of what the characters looked like, based on the wonderful line drawings in the books. But it probably did bring a burst of publicity.
Helen Cresswell! I was just thinking about how much of an influence she's had on my own writing (though much more from the Bagthorpe Saga than the fantasy books).
So interesting to be reminded of Helen Cresswell, a name I remembered. I hadn't read either of these books, but I did love A Gift from Winkelsea, and the Lizzie Dripping books, which I'm sure I watchedon tv. I looked her up and she was such a big noise on children's television. Thank you for the memory!
Fascinating stuff. I must admit I hadn't heard of Helen Cresswell before, and I'd missed the TV series of Moondial (too old). Now I'm intrigued.
Quickly picking up on your aside about Arthur Ransome; I'm just wondering how he'd have felt about your phrase 'fantasy Lakeland'. It's certainly a re-imagined landscape, but very strongly grounded in the real one, with many places being reproduced essentially as they were, with only the names changed: 'Rio' is unmistakably Bowness, for example. But then the same seems to be true of Crewell's Llangolly/Llandudno, albeit it is the backdrop for a fantasy of time-travel.
I think the point I was trying to make is that Ransome's Lakeland is often an amalgam (probably a better word than fantasy now I think about it) of different locations rearranged as neccesary to suit the needs of the plot, whereas Belton is an exact piece of mapping. He'd agree I think, that Windermere and Coniston are both in Swallows and Amazons for instance.
Up The Pier I suspect is pretty faithful to 1970s Llandudno but I can't really check!
Yes, I would agree with amalgam. It’s the specific connotations of the word ‘fantasy’ that I was uneasy with. Especially as two of Ransome’s books, Peter Duck and Missee Lee, have much stronger claims to be considered fantasies. Though even here, not in the sense that there’s anything magical involved.
On the Windermere/Coniston question, I’ve explored this in some depth, e.g. https://ransomeslakedistrict.com/2014/12/07/the-real-ransome-country/
I'm another Helen Cresswell fan - but for the Bagthorpe saga which I adored. HC seems to have written very different styles of books: the Bagthorpes were irreverent, witty comedy with no hint of the supernatural, while a lot of her other books were full of magic and slightly creepy. We had a few read aloud to us at school - e.g. The Piemakers - but I never sought them out, but your piece has made me want to explore this side of Cresswell's work.
I'm really not sure how I managed to miss the Bagthorpe books as a child - I might need to rectify that now!
Like a lot of HC's work they were also a TV series – I didn't like it, but by then I had fixed ideas of what the characters looked like, based on the wonderful line drawings in the books. But it probably did bring a burst of publicity.
Helen Cresswell! I was just thinking about how much of an influence she's had on my own writing (though much more from the Bagthorpe Saga than the fantasy books).
One interesting thing about reading for this piece was discovering just how much she wrote that I missed as a child!
So interesting to be reminded of Helen Cresswell, a name I remembered. I hadn't read either of these books, but I did love A Gift from Winkelsea, and the Lizzie Dripping books, which I'm sure I watchedon tv. I looked her up and she was such a big noise on children's television. Thank you for the memory!
She was definitely much more prolific than I realised before I wrote this.