The Picts and the Martyrs

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First Publication

Published by Jonathan Cape in June, 1943.

Availability

In print.

Hardback: Jonathan Cape ISBN 978-0224606417

Paperback: Red Fox ISBN 978-0099427278

E-book: Random House Children’s Books (from 30 June, 2011)

Also available as an abridged audiobook (Gabriel Woolf)

Background

In late 1940 the disturbance caused by bombing around Ipswich persuaded Arthur and Evgenia Ransome to move back to the Lake District. Ransome bought The Heald, a house on the east side of Coniston Water. They were to live there for most of the war.

The move inspired Ransome’s fifth and final Lake District novel. The Picts and the Martyrs is the shortest and most humourous novel in the Swallows and Amazons series. Much of it takes place in the kind of thick, fellside woods that surrounded the Heald, whilst the Great-Aunt’s uninvited invasion of Nancy and Peggy’s home arguably owes something to world events at the time Ransome was writing.

Synopsis

When Captain Flint takes Mrs Blackett away to convalesce, they want Nancy and Peggy to enjoy a quiet houseparty, with Dick and Dorothea as their guests. But trouble soon looms for everyone, when Nancy and Peggy’s fearsome Great-Aunt comes to stay.