Swallows and Amazons series

But he did have...

some incredible fun and I know he's made lifelong memories and we got to spend a week down there with him while he was there and with our friends we had the most incredible time it was just how you imagine the summers and how I remember summers like from reading the book Swallows and Amazons how it all should be it was barbecues on the beach bobbing on the sea it was wonderful Tom got his A-level results he totally smashed it he smashed his predictions And when he got them, he was like, I'm not going to go to uni.

I want out of the institution.

I'm going to go take a year off.

So we were lucky enough to have a holiday house on Lake Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains.

My mother was a great sailor, and there were four of us children, which was the perfect family unit to replay Swallows and Amazons, which are those famous, beautiful books about a family of four children sailing in the Lake District in England.

So...

I and my siblings were always out sailing, a little miradingi, on that lake, pretending there were pirates, pretending we were explorers.

She escaped inwardly from the turbulence of her life into a world of fiction.

She'd shut herself away with the children's classics of the time, Beatrix Potter and Enid Blyton, then The Secret Garden and Swallows and Amazons.

She sought something beyond, something that was beyond the ordinary life.

She wanted to touch on a greater power.

Sometimes the quality is uneven, but I think some of the things that aren't as well known with hers are really as rich and interesting as some of the other ones.

I think for Swallows and Amazons is one that I don't think is very well known, at least this side of the pond.

It's kind of a British classic adventure story of young people having free summers to mess about in ponds with boats.

And it's just a beautiful story of free range parenting before that was needed to have a name on it.

She escaped inwardly from the turbulence of her life into a world of fiction.

She'd shut herself away with the children's classics of the time, Beatrix Potter and Enid Blyton, then The Secret Garden and Swallows and Amazons.

She sought something beyond, something that was beyond the ordinary life.

She wanted to touch on a greater power.

And this week we're joined by Ed Balls, broadcaster, podcaster, economist and former politician, as he reflects on the books that have shaped him.

From childhood favourites like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Swallows and Amazons and The Wind in the Willows, to the life-changing Testament of Youth.

He also

discusses what he's been reading lately, the role of food and memory in his writing, and the importance he now places on valuing the present.

And, and there's sort of the, the larger than life kind of imagination of those books.

And, you know, of course, Augustus Gloop and, and, and the, and it's just fabulous.

But the second book I remember thinking, this is a proper kind of becoming adult book, was Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ensign.

And my dad was a big fan of Arthur Ensign.