The Life Of Arthur Ransome

Arthur Ransome was among the most attractive and gifted literary figures of his time. Hugh Brogan has written a delightful book about him which brings him dramatically back to life.

Brogan's life of the man and his study of the works serve as a powerful, excellently supported and splendidly-written piece of English cultural history.

Hugh Brogan was for ten years a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He is now a lecturer in American History at the University of Essex. His publications include <i>A History of the United States</i>.

For a man who longed for a quiet existence, Arthur Ransome led a remarkably adventurous life. His bohemian years as a writer in Chelsea before the First World War closed with the agony of his prosecution for Libel by Lord Alfred Douglas. His two marriages - first to an unstable fantasist and later to a formidable Russian who had been Trotsky's secretary - were, to say the least, stormy. As a journalist he had a ringside view of the Russian Revolution and travelled widely in the Middle East and China. It was not until he was 45 and settled in the Lake District that he embarked, in the Swallows and Amazons stories, on some of the best loved books ever written for children.

Hugh Brogan

This new edition of Brogan's superb one-volume history - from early British colonisation to the Reagan years - captures an array of dynamic personalities and events.  In a broad sweep of America's triumphant progress. Brogan explores the period leading to Independence from both the American and the British points of view, touching on permanent features of 'the American character' - both the good and the bad. He provides a masterly synthesis of all the latest research illustrating America's rapid growth from humble beginnings to global dominance.

The Penguin History of the United States of America

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