Hugh Brogan / University of Essex.

Hugh Brogan, who died on 26th July at the age of 83, was a distinguished historian – Emeritus Professor at Essex University – but will be remembered outside academia chiefly for his role as the biographer of Arthur Ransome, writes Peter Willis.

It was a task that occupied the best part of a decade, initiated almost by accident when he read a review of the 1974 film of Swallows and Amazons that described Ransome as a ‘frightful old Tory’. What happened next is well-known. Brogan, who had been enjoying a bibulous evening in the senior common room, dashed off a furious letter to Ransome’s publishers, complaining that such ignorance was due to the lack of a proper biography – and immediately posted it in a nearby letter-box. This led to a meeting with Evgenia, Ransome’s widow, who appointed him as her husband’s official biographer.

The Life of Arthur Ransome by Hugh Brogan.

The Life of Arthur Ransome was published in 1984, Ransome’s centenary, and played a major part in the revival of interest in its subject. Brogan followed it up with Signalling to Mars, a selection of Ransome’s letters, in 1997. He also edited a collection of Ransome’s Russian stories, titled The War of the Birds and the Beasts (1984) and Ransome’s unfinished draft of a 13th Swallows and Amazons book, to which he gave the title Coots in the North, putting it together with a selection of other previously unpublished stories, in 1988.

Hugh was a genial and affable companion and, naturally an engaging speaker. His last public appearance at a Ransome-related event was at the Pin Mill Jamboree commemorating the 50th anniversary of Arthur’s death in 2017. He had accepted an invitation to speak at the 2018 Nancy Blackett Trust AGM, but had to cry off as he was due to have a pacemaker fitted. Some of us were lucky enough to enjoy a pub lunch with him at Wivenhoe, where he lived, during an Arthur Ransome Society visit there last March.

Hugh Brogan, Roger Wardale and Christina Hardyment outside the Butt and Oyster at Pin Mill at Mike Rine’s 1989 lunch to mark Nancy Blackett’s restoration / Martin Lewis.

– Peter Willis

See also:

• Obituary by the University of Essex