I would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for them pesky rabbits

Embarrassing (and completely un-ironic) Sountrack of the day - Only Yesterday - The Carpenters

(I do have the best of Joy Division for later.)

I have just read this article about Watership Down (You will need to register your email address but the access is free). I was actually trying to find the reason for the link to the online Telegraph from this article at the BBC but I came across the Richard Adams interview instead. I read Watership Down avidly when I was ten; it was a cracking story. I must admit I missed all the references to Classical Greek myths and all the rest of it. Strangely. it reminds me of the later obsessions of Ted Hughes. Another book to pop on the 'to read' list maybe. I have just found out that Richard Adams' book "The Girl in a swing" was made into a film in 1989, starring Meg Tilly (apparently with an atrocious German Accent). I loved "The Girl in a Swing". The Telegraph Article describes it as an 'erotic ghost story'. I admit that it had its moments but to dismiss it as that seems a bit much. The eroticism was never more than the normal part of the main character's love for the woman who half way through the book became his wife. It is hardly Anais Nin. (As I am at work, I think it better to avoid searching for a link to that particular author). There was something very familiar about The girl in a swing. There are some good reviews of the film; the man himself, Rogert Ebert seemed to like it but this one is hilarious. I particularly like 'There are few things with less sex appeal than Episcopalians in love' and I think I may be bored with the American obsession with us sexually repressed Britishers. The last review on the Amazon site is NOT me though it could be. Weird! The general feeling of the reviews seems to be that the ending was unresolved but I though that was the beauty of the book. I have it in my mind because although I made up my mind what exactly had happened, the book never explicitly defined it ( well not that I remember). Watership Down is memorable because there is so much of it and so many images. The Girl in a Swing is memorable because so much of it is left un-written.

Anyway, all of this leads me on to a recently completed (read not written) book, 'The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome'. The whole thing has to be seen in a completely different light. Knowing that he worked for British Intelligence, sheds new light on the episodes just after WWI. There is a particular incident when he was returning from Russia to the UK via Finland. He writes that the Finnish police were instructed to hold him under arrest by various factions in the UK who thought that Britain should fight against the Red Russians with the anti-soviet forces and that his view of anti-interventionism would damage their cause. He says that he happily slipped through and a secret serviceman was arrested in his place and denied access to the British Consulate. Ransome arrived back in the UK and was immediately accompanied to Scotland Yard and questioned regarding his Politics ('Fishing' was his answer.) While in the Office of the head of Scotland Yard (Basil Thompson) , there was a phone call. Thompson spoke and then put the phone down laughing, saying "That was the Foreign Office to tell me that you are arriving in Britain tomorrow". I suspect that this never happened and that the secret serviceman arrested in Finland WAS Arthur Ransome and all this was a fiction to cover up his real exploits. It sounds like he changed the course of history. I didn't realise that British officers actually commanded tanks in the coalition armies that attacked the Soviets in the year after WWI ended. There is loads of history which is quietly hidden away as embarrasing. Read more and find out more of what 'we' did in the wars. We won and so we are 'top-nation'.