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Kenneth Grahame

After a somewhat chaotic few weeks of packing, moving and settling in to my new abode, it occurred to me that I hadn’t taken a journey out of London for a while.  So, after flicking through my sacred blog book, I decided a train ride to Henley-on-Thames might be just the thing to get me back on track after missing last week.

I sort of fell out of bed around six thirty this morning, (after pressing the snooze button twice), because I don’t like to waste my weekends sleeping in, and headed off into London Paddington. From there, I caught the train to Twyford and then a connection out to Henley.  The main reason for my visit was to seek out the River and Rowing Museum which is the home of The Wind in the Willows exhibition.

Parts of The Wind in the Willow exhibition

I love The Wind in the Willows for a number of reasons, but before I start rambling about the book, let’s meet the author.

Kenneth Grahame was a Scottish writer born in Edinburgh in 1859. At the age of five, his mother died from complications of childbirth and his father gave Kenneth and the other children to their grandmother. This is when he was introduced to the riverside by his uncle and it’s believed that this was the inspiration for The Wind in the Willows.

Sadly for Grahame, he was unable to attend Oxford University due to financial difficulties and instead worked in banking, and I for one know how that feels.  He married Elspeth Thomson in 1899 and they had one son together. During his spare time, Grahame would invent bedtime stories for his son Alastair, and these stories of a toad and his friends who lived on a river bank became a masterpiece.

I find the surrealism of animals driving cars or sitting have conversations in front of a fire place and rowing boats on the river hilarious. I love the character’s names as well, there’s nothing pretentious about a toad called Mr Toad who lives at Toad Hall or Mole or Mr Badger. It’s simple yet fascinating and when I visited the exhibition today, the characters from the pages of a story I love, came to life.  There’s one particular part where you can actually hear Badger snoring.  I would almost go as far to say that it’s one of the best exhibitions I’ve seen, after which I indulged in my first cream tea for the year which didn’t quite meet the standard of others I’ve had, but I enjoyed it none the less.

Kenneth Grahame died on July the 6^th in 1932 and is laid to rest in Hollywell Cemetery, Oxford. Grahame was an exemplary student and a man of great intelligence who loved the river and created a watery fantasy world where the creatures go about their lives as we do.  Incredible to say the least I might also add that Once upon a time by a river, a fantastic man taught us that *there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing around in boats.

*The Wind in the Willows
http://rrm.co.uk/