EMINENT writer Christina Hardyment will start a marathon reading of the classic children’s story Swallows and Amazons at Coniston on Sunday (Sept 3).

Ms Hardyment will read chapter one (The Peak in Darien) as a host of celebrities and fans line up to join in the celebration of the life and work of the author Arthur Ransome.

They will gather on the lake shore at Coniston where the story is set, almost directly opposite the farm (Bank Ground) on which the holiday house of the opening sentence was based.

The event is organised by Dr Chris Routledge who is head of Continuing Education, English Language and Literature, at Liverpool University, in association with the Lake District National Park Authority and The Arthur Ransome Trust. Also supporting the reading are Stephen and Janine Sykes who live at Hill Top, Ransome’s last home in the Lake District.

Lining up to read chapters are novelists and actors, open water swimmers, adventurers and Ransome fans young and old. The youngest is eight-year-old James Vyner-Brooks, sharing a chapter with his brother David. Also reading is Dr Routledge’s 13-year-old daughter Caitlin, along with Elizabeth Kaye, the 11-year-old daughter of Jonathan and Caroline Kaye, owners of Windermere’s Cedar Manor Hotel, who are avid fans of the Ransome stories.

They join novelist Ruth Sutton, interior designer Alison Tordoff, and actors Hannah Jayne Thorp and Sophie Neville who appeared in the 2016 and 1974 film versions of the book. Also taking part is Becky Heaton Cooper, director of Grasmere’s Heaton Cooper Studio, who is currently reading Swallows and Amazons to her six-year-old twins Alfie and Ophelia.

Christina Hardyment, who has a fascination with literary geography - exploring the settings that inspired writers classic and modern - has written two books about Ransome: Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint’s Trunk (which resulted in her becoming executor of the Arthur Ransome Literary Estate) and The World of Arthur Ransome, part biography, part companion to all 12 books of the Swallows and Amazons series.

The third of her literary anthologies for the British Library, Pleasures of Nature, was published last year. She is currently working on a second book for the Bodleian Library, The Home as Hero, a series of portraits of houses which are of crucial importance in novels.

The free event, on the shore just north of the Coniston Boating Centre and the Blue Bird café, marks the end of a summer-long series of celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Arthur Ransome. The reading starts at 9am and is expected to finish around 6pm. The Arthur Ransome Trust will have a stall with books and other memorabilia.

The opening sentence: “Roger, aged seven, and no longer the youngest of the family, ran in wide zigzags, to and fro, across the steep field that sloped up from the lake to Holly Howe, the farm where they were staying for the summer holidays.”