The Wind in the Willows

I’ve just read ‘The Wind in the Willows’ by Kenneth Grahame for about the fourth time. Essentially a children’s book, it is one that can be enjoyed by people of any age and can be read over and over again. The main characters are four friends: Mole, Rat, Badger and Toad. The story weaves together themes of adventure, friendship, wanderlust, home, the class system and contains wonderfully lyrical descriptions of the seasons and the English countryside. It was first published in 1908 and its commercial success allowed Grahame to take early retirement (from banking) to enjoy “simply messing about in boats”. It is considered by many people to be a classic of British literature. My favourite edition is illustrated by E.H Shepard.

Ratty and Mole

from Chapter 3

“There was plenty to talk about on those short winter days when the animals found themselves round the fire; still, the Mole had a good deal of spare time on his hands, and so one afternooon, when the Rat in his armchair was alternately dozing and trying out rhymes that wouldn’t fit, he formed the resolution to go out by himself and explore the Wild Wood, and perhaps strike up an acquaintance with Mr. Badger.

It was a cold still afternoon with a hard steely sky overhead, when he slipped out of the warm parlour into the open air. The country lay bare and entirely leafless around him, and he thought that he had never seen so far and so intimately into the insides of things as on that winter day when Nature was deep in her annual slumber and seemed to have kicked the clothes off.

Copses, dells, quarries and all hidden places, which had been mysterious mines for exploration in leafy summer, now exposed themselves and their secrets pathetically, and seemed to ask him to overlook their shabby poverty for a while, till they could riot in rich masquerade as before, and trick and entice him with the old deceptions. It was pitiful in a way, and yet cheering— even exhilarating. He was glad that he liked the country undecorated, hard, and stripped of its finery. He had got down to the bare bones of it, and they were fine and strong and simple. He did not want the warm clover and the play of seeding grasses; the screens of quickset, the billowy drapery of beech and elm seemed best away; and with great cheerfulness of spirit he pushed on towards the Wild Wood, which lay before him low and threatening, like a black reef in some still southern sea.”