Coot Club (1934)
Synopsis and Further Information on Coot Club
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Synopsis Dick and Dorothea travel to the Norfolk Broads. Their mother's old schoolmistress, Mrs Barrable has invited them to come and live on a yacht with her, whilst her own brother is away. Fresh from meeting the Swallows and Amazons in Winter Holiday, the D's are keen to join her and to get on with learning how to sail. Unfortunately for them, Mrs Barrable knows that they can't handle her yacht, the Teasel, alone - far from teaching them to sail, she is planning to use the Teasel as a houseboat for the last two weeks of the Easter holiday. Meanwhile, unknown to Mrs Barrable and the D's, a crisis is looming upriver at Horning. There the doctor's son, Tom Dudgeon, a solicitor's twin daughters Port and Starboard, and boatbuilders' sons Joe, Bill and Pete form the Coot Club, dedicated to protecting local birds from danger. The Margoletta, a rented motor cruiser has moored over the nest of the Coot Club's most important nest and her uncouth party of "Hullabaloos" have flattly refused to move when politely asked. Taking desperate action, Tom casts the Margoletta adrift before being forced to use to Teasel to aide his escape. Siding with Tom against the unpleasant Hullabaloos, Mrs Barrable and the D's soon make friends with Tom and the Coot Club. They unite to help Tom evade the vengeful Hullabaloos, whilst Tom agrees to take charge of the Teasel, first teaching the D's to sail and then taking them on a voyage through the dangers of Yarmouth to the Southern Broads. Aided by the Coot Club's local enemy, George Owdon, the Hullabaloos pursue them all the way to a climax on the mudflats of Breydon Water. |
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For a more detailed synopsis of the Swallows and Amazons series, see Approaching Arthur Ransome by Peter Hunt. ISBN 0-224-03288-7. Jonathan Cape, 1991. | ||
| Further Information Coot Club is set in the Easter Holiday immediately following Winter Holiday, ie in the spring of 1931 or 1932. Ransome had a long-standing affinity for, and knowledge of, the Norfolk Broads. A cruise there in 1931 fired his imagination and desire to use the Broads landscape for a novel. Writing to his mother in December, 1933, Ransome stated that he thought Falmouth had great potential for "a lovely story", but that "the Broads one has been working up for two or three years now", even though at that time he still had no working ideas for its plot. |
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For a more detailed study of the background to the Swallows and Amazons Series, see Amazon Publication's The Best of Childhood, 2004. The Best of Childhood is available to current TARS Members from the Society Stall. | ||
| Winter Holiday (1933) | Return to "Books" | Pigeon Post (1936) |
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