A marathon reading of Arthur Ransome’s classic story Pigeon Post is happening near Coniston tomorrow (29th September).

Chris Routledge. Credit: University of Liverpool.

The all-day event starts at 8am at the Coniston Coppermines Youth Hostel and has been organised by writer and lecturer Chris Routledge, in association with The Arthur Ransome Trust, who also staged a similar reading of Swallows and Amazons on the shore of Coniston Water in September 2017.

Each participant will be reading a chapter of Pigeon Post, the sixth book in the Swallows and Amazons series. Arthur Ransome won the inaugural Carnegie Medal from the Library Association for “Pigeon Post”, which sees the children from the earlier books exploring and searching for gold in the Coniston fells during a hot dry summer.

Pigeon Post.

The Swallows and Amazons marathon reading was a huge success, when Sophie Neville, the actress who starred as Titty Walker in the original 1974 film version of Swallows and Amazons, was joined by Hannah Jayne Thorp, who played Peggy Blackett in the 2016 film, as well as novelist Ruth Sutton, actor Matt Addis, interior designer Alison Tordoff, Becky Heaton Cooper, director of Grasmere’s Heaton Cooper Studio, and author Christina Hardyment.

An additional marathon reading of another Ransome story, We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea, was held at Pin Mill in October 2017, with readers including Griff Rhys Jones and Libby Purves, organised by the Nancy Blackett Trust.

The marathon reading of Pigeon Post takes place outside the Coppermines Youth Hostel tomorrow (Sunday 29th September), starting at 8am and expected to continue until at least 4pm. Anyone in the area is invited to stop by.

Coppermines Coniston. Photo by Peter Trimming.