Coots in the north

No cover — Arthur Michell Ransome: Coots in the north

English language

ISBN:: 978-0-224-02605-5

(1 review)

Coots in the North is the name given by Arthur Ransome's biographer, Hugh Brogan, to an incomplete Swallows and Amazons novel found in Ransome's papers. Brogan edited and published the first few chapters as a fragment with a selection of Ransome's other short stories in 1988. The story starts in the Broads but continues in the Lake District after the Death and Glories hitch a ride aboard a boat being delivered to the Lake in the North.

1 edition

Paul Oldham reviewed Coots in the north by Arthur Michell Ransome

Both wonderful and frustrating

4 stars

This is only a book for Ransome enthusiasts, but if that's you - and there's a lot of us - then this is a book you need to read as it concludes with the opening four chapters, and some other snippets, of what would have been the thirteenth book of the Swallows and Amazons saga, which Brogan speculatively titles 'Coots in the North'. What there is of it suggests it would have been a fine addition to the novels but it wasn't to be.

The book also features some other, complete, short stories Ransome wrote at various times and some of those are very fine too as are the opening chapters of another novel which he never finished.