Tune into BBC4 this evening at 8pm to see “Swallows and Amazons” as the subject of “The Secret Life of Books”. According to the episode’s page, the details are:

“Former journalist and keen amateur sailor John Sergeant takes to the water in the wake of the plucky young heroes of Arthur Ransome’s “Swallows and Amazons”, and learns how a globe-trotting foreign correspondent and acquaintance of Lenin and Trotsky came to perfect a new, more authentic kind of children’s literature that featured real children doing real things in real places.”

The episode features scenes filmed on Coniston Water in the company of Geraint Lewis of the Arthur Ransome Trust, and will also be available to watch on BBC iPlayer for a month after broadcast.