The Wind in the Willows

"Most of the books that I have picked are really teenage fiction because that is my area but this is the very first book I fell in love with. I just adored The Wind in the Willows . It was first read to me and then I read it and took it into school to be read. I really loved the cosy chapters in particular. There are two sides to The Wind in the Willows . There are the Toad chapters where he is out having adventures. But there is also a big theme in the book which is about home – for example, the chapter “Dulce Domum” where Mole finds his house again and when the little Otter gets lost and the great god Pan comes along and helps him. I loved them so much my parents actually had someone paint a picture of Pan for me on my wall. I was just really taken with those romantic, nostalgic, homely types of things at that time. It wasn’t until much later that I started becoming interested in the relationship between fiction and real life. They were just so cosy and warm and snugly. The fiction that I liked when I was young was very much about cosy little adventures with animals and that sort of thing. I didn’t even really like The Famous Five by Enid Blyton because it was a bit too realistic. No it was the Mole and the Rat for me. There is a lot in the book that isn’t about Toad. There is one chapter when Rat is tempted to leave and go off travelling because the swallows are leaving, but in the end he decides home is more important. And, of course, all of Toad’s adventures end up with him trying to recapture his home, so that is very much a central theme to the book. I read it to my kids and they did enjoy it, although I am not sure they enjoyed it as much as I did! Maybe, but you can always try it on them. Read a short bit each night and if they get bored they get bored. It will be interesting to see how it goes."

"This is a very personal choice. I come from a standard immigrant, urban background and reading Wind in the Willows opened my eyes to the way the English upper middle classes lived and the things they thought were important. Countryside. Woods – what the hell were woods? Picnics. So before I had even discovered Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, all these details – sandwiches, lemonade – were just jaw-dropping to me. Essentially there is a bad reading and good reading. The bad reading is that it is a parable about class, where the stoats and the weasels are working-class oiks who invade an Edwardian perpetual summer in which we go boating and chasing lambs in the fields and whatnot. They take over Toad Hall and it’s all very unjust and revolutionary. Later in life I had a flirtation with Maoism – maybe it was because I had sympathy with the revolutionary stoats and weasels, they were on the right side against someone as repulsive as Toad. “If there is no longer very much that resembles a community, how do you even begin to try to adapt that community to take in new arrivals?” But the good reading is what underlies all this: Badger as a sort of maven, a symbol of the values of decency and fair play. He’s a bit stodgy and dull but in the end he is somebody who will take people for what they are and treat them decently. He believes in protecting, in this case the property rights of the aristocracy, but more broadly the rule of law. Wind in the Willows is tied up with an age of Englishness which I think had a great many things to recommend it. People were a lot less embarrassed than they are now to talk about values – even if those values might not be ones you would share today. I think it’s good for young people, these ideas that you should be fair to people, and that there are certain ways of behaving that are reasonable in a good society. If you want to translate it into political terms, Badger would be a one-nation Tory. I have got a lot of time for his horror at Toad’s selfishness. Well, Toad has inherited his wealth from his father, who was Badger’s friend: these are country types who have a great sense of responsibility for keeping the community together, giving a shilling or to the poor, the sort of things today we gulp at. But underlying it all is a fundamental idea of fair play. Toad is a conspicuous consumer, a materialist, a faddist. And bear in mind one of the most interesting moments is when Toad has to pretend to be a washerwoman, which means he has to put his hands into washing water and they become wrinkled and he sees it as terribly ghastly – and actually this was what the upper classes used to be like. As long as they exist, the upper classes have to be drawn into recognising that they have some relationship with the rest of society and something in common with society – that’s what the humbling of Toad is about."

"My last choice is The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame. If you ask me today, what is your favourite book, I’d be torn between The Secret Garden and The Wind in the Willows . But the book I read and re-read was The Wind in the Willows . It is very special to me. The characters are alive in my head and I love every single one of them. I thought that the Thames Valley, as described by Kenneth Grahame, was what a wood was really like. As a child I identified with Ratty — I was Ratty, and I loved Toad because he was so naughty. Badger was the grown-up and scared me a little. This book evokes a wonderful wild wood of Edwardian England, but it’s not entirely benign. The story features intrusions by modernity – the motor-car and trains crashing through the countryside. Industrialisation is encroaching on the countryside and having an impact on the character of the countryside, and this change is wrought by humanity. “ The Wind in the Willows is my literary spine. I love it in a way that means I can’t be rational about it.” When I was fifteen, my mother took me to see Alan Bennett’s adaptation of Wind in the Willows, directed by Nicholas Hytner at The National Theatre. It thrilled me like nothing I had ever experienced. I can remember the show vividly today. It cemented an idea in my head, that I wanted to work in the theatre. Twenty years later, I went to work at The National Theatre and Nicholas Hytner became my boss. I even got to work with Alan Bennett and Mark Thompson, the set designer who brought the world of The Wind in the Willows to life on stage. The Wind in the Willows is my literary spine. I love it in a way that means I can’t be rational about it. I feel like this book has guided me. Whilst working at The National Theatre, I learned about storytelling, and I wrote Beetle Boy on my way to work there, and front of house, in my lunch breaks. All the books I’ve chosen have steered me – formed me, created me. They made me see beauty and wonder where I hadn’t before. Now, I choose to write for the insects, to open the eyes of children and adults to the industrious charm of the beetle, and, I hope, create a little wonderment at the natural world – to encourage respect and appreciation, for the benefit of everyone."