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.