Arthur Ransome
English author and journalist (1884–1967)
Arthur Michell Ransome (18 January 1884 – 3 June 1967) was an English author, intelligence agent, and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. The entire series remains in print, and Swallows and Amazons is the basis for a tourist industry around Windermere and Coniston Water, the two lakes Ransome adapted as his fictional North Country lake.
He also wrote about the literary life of London, and about Russia before, during, and after the revolutions of 1917. His connection with the leaders of the Revolution led to him providing information to the Secret Intelligence Service, while he was also suspected by MI5 of being a Soviet spy.
Early life
Ransome was the son of Cyril Ransome (1851–1897) and his wife Edith Ransome (née Baker Boulton) (1862–1944). Arthur was the eldest of four children: he had two sisters, Cecily and Joyce, and a brother Geoffrey who was killed in the First World War in 1918. Joyce married into the Lupton family, well-connected industrialists and politicians; one of her sons was Arthur Ralph Ransome Lupton (1924–2009) and one of her grandchildren is storyteller Hugh Lupton (born 1952).
Ransome was born in Leeds; the house at 6 Ash Grove, in the Hyde Park area, has a blue plaque beside the door commemorating his birthplace. Ransome's father was professor of history at Yorkshire College (now the University of Leeds).
The public source identifies “Arthur Ransome” as english author and journalist (1884–1967). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Arthur, Ransome and English.
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This entry incorporates text from “Arthur Ransome” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.