That awful dawning when you emerge from innocent sleep and remember something you didn’t do right, and dismay fills the pit of your belly like a cloud billowing in a balloon.

‘There was sunlight outside. Yet he woke with a queer feeling of gloom. It was like waking on the day after he had written parvissimus instead of minimus in an examination paper. Something had gone wrong.’

For more of a taster of these timeless classics, see our review here, or simply enjoy some splendid cover illustrations for the books.

Source: Arthur Ransome, Secret Water (London: Vintage, 2014 (1939)), p. 459