Announcing the release, Audible’s director, Laurence Howell said: “Swallows and Amazons is children’s storytelling at its finest. We are thrilled to bring these stories to life for a new generation. We very much hope that families up and down the country set sail on their own imaginative voyages – no dinghy required!”

Audible’s press release continues: “Endorsed and supported by the Arthur Ransome Literary Estate, Audible.co.uk brings some of the best children’s fiction ever written to life, with the power to enthrall a new generation of explorers, adventurers and pirates. Gareth Armstrong, an actor whose varied roles include everything from Shakespearean anti-villain Shylock to Sean Myerson of The Archers, narrates the series. His lively ad nuanced performance of Ransome’s adventurous tales provides entertainment families can enjoy together.”

You can find the new audiobooks, with cover art adapted from the iconic Jonathan Cape dust jackets, at Audible.co.uk.

We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea, Secret Water and The Big Six are scheduled for publication in mid June, with Missee Lee, The Picts and the Martyrs and Great Northern? following in mid October. 

This follows last week’s announcement that Pietari Posti had won the 2013 V&A Book Cover Illustration Award for the Vintage Classics edition of Swallows and Amazons.

In their announcement, the V&A’s judges explained that they “loved the strong use of colour and shape in Posti’s work and the way this created a dynamic visual theme throughout the series of books”.

Vintage, an imprint of Random House Ltd, included Swallows and Amazons and Swallowdale in their first Children’s Classics list, which was created to inspire 8 – 12 year olds to a lifelong love of reading. They have subsequently added the next four Swallows and Amazons novels: Peter Duck, Winter Holiday, Coot Club and Pigeon Post, all with covers designed by Pietari. We await confirmation of whether, and when, the last six Swallows and Amazons novels will join Vintage’s list.

In addition to the Vintage editions, all twelve novels are remain available in Jonathan Cape (hardback), Red Fox (paperback) and Random House Digital Editions (ebook) formats. They are also available as abridged audiobooks (produced and read by Gabriel Woolf), and will soon be released in unabridged format by Audible, read by Gareth Armstrong.

Pietari Posti’s covers thus far include:

Hosted at Bank Ground Farm, the inspiration for Arthur Ransome’s Holly Howe, the Regatta brought a dozen steam launches and sailing boats together for three days. The participants enjoyed sunshine and stiff breezes.

The latter were appreciated by the ART Trustees on both land an water: on the water they allowed some enjoyable sailing, whilst on land they provided a good baptism for the Trust’s new mobile display shelter, the first piece of equipment that the Trust has acquired as part of its 2013 – 14 Annual Fund.

Happily, the shelter stood up to the wind, allowing the Trust to mount a display about Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons, and the Trust’s plans for the full three days of the Regatta. The Trust’s display was accompanied by Rob Boden’s replica Swallows and Amazons camp site, which looked particularly at home on the shore of Coniston Water.

You can read about the Regatta in our Previous Events Section, and see more pictures from the event in our Galleries.

We’re bringing a small Voyages of Discovery display about Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons and the Trust, and we’re looking forward to a great regatta at Bank Ground Farm (“Holly Howe” in Swallows and Amazons), both on land and on the water.

If you’d like to know more about Arthur Ransome, about his books, or about the Trust’s plans to develop a centre celebrating both, then please do come and say “hello”. If you don’t want to know more, but just want to say “hello” anyway, then that’s fine too!

If you’d like to know more about our current plans, you can do so at our Explorers, Pirates and Astronomers Ahoy! page, which introduces the aims of our first Annual Fund.

Bonhams will be auctioning this collection as Lot 205 in their forthcoming Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Historical Photographs sale on Wednesday, June 19, at 2.00pm. The auction details are now available online at Bonhams website.

Are you amongst those who’ve voyaged with the Swallows and Amazons to Wild Cat Island in your mind, or trekked to the North Pole, or hunted High Topps for gold? Or can you trace your passion for star gazing, geology or conservation to Dick Callum, or for writing to his sister, Dorothea? Did you decide to join the Navy in John’s wake, or become a pirate in Nancy’s…?

The latter is perhaps unlikely, at least for real. But the point remains: The twelve Swallows and Amazons novels have inspired generations of readers, firing imaginations, encouraging interests and, for some, stimulating their professional careers. ART is working to help them continue to do so, ultimatly via an Arthur Ransome Centre. More immediately, the Trust has an active range of projects developing Arthur Ransome and Swallows and Amazons-focused exhibitions, events, activities and resources.

Since it’s formation in 2010, ART has taken significant strides: for example co-organising the Imagination and Reality exhibition and lecture programme with The Brantwood Trust, at Brantwood, in 2011 and creating a mobile Voyages of Discovery display, to accompany the Swallows and Amazons musical at Bristol, and on tour.

ART is now seeking support to fund the Trust’s next three steps:

• Developing Voyages of Discovery into an imaginative programme of events and displays around the UK;
• Creating inspiring and enjoyable resources for Model Students, for use in schools and informal settings;
• Working towards A Ransome Home by building up resources, in particular through the Trust’s Ransome jigsaw map.

To find out more, please go to our Explorers, Pirates and Astronomers Ahoy! page, for an introduction to the Trust’s first Annual Fund. Or, if you are near Coniston between Thursday, May 30 and Saturday, June 1, please do come to find out more at the Coniston Regatta.

Emails sent to this address forward to the three executors, Christina Hardyment, Geraint Lewis and Elizabeth Sewart. they are not read by anyone at All Things Ransome.

You can read more about the Literary Estate in the Arthur Ransome section of our website.

The Executors have asked us to express their thanks to The Arthur Ransome Society, who provided the Estate’s previous contact address. The Arthur Ransome Society’s new website can be found at www.arthur-ransome.org.uk.

From the book’s cover: “Drawing freely on Ransome’s sailing log, his diaries and those of his wife, an intimate portrait emerges of the iconic children’s author on holiday, as well as a unique picture of the Norfolk Broads at a crucial point in their transition from the wilderness that he loved to a watery playground” – a tension that will be familiar to readers of Coot Club.

We’ve updated our Books about Arthur Ransome page with details of Roger’s book, and also with those of two Ransome-related titles published in 2012, Christina Hardyment’s The World of Arthur Ransome (Frances Lincoln), and Margaret Ratcliffe’s Genetic Building Blocks: the Forebears of Arthur Ransome (Amazon Publications).

ART is bringing a Voyage of Discovery, with information about Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome, and the Trust’s plans. We’re planning to have fun too! So if you are in the Coniston area or planning a visit to the Lakes, please do drop by and say hello.

“We went down to their boathouse and out in the Swallow… The first of a long dynasty of Swallows in my sailing life.” (The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome).

It was on the lake off Bank Ground Farm that Arthur Ransome first learnt to sail, tutored by the Collingwoods, who lived at Lanehead nearby. A quarter of a century later, he used the same location as an inspiration for Holly Howe, the farm at which Swallows and Amazons begins. The Regatta will be a great opportunity to visit, with both Gondola and Coniston Launch providing transport across the lake.

More information about the Regatta is available at the Regatta website.