The Outlaw of the Broads by Dorothea Callum

Thanks to Norfolk and Norwich

Title: The Outlaw of the Broads

Author: Dorothea Callum

Publisher: Not known

Source book: Coot Club, The Big Six and Pigeon Post by Arthur Ransome 

Dorothea is a very slow writer or perhaps very easily distracted. We know she has been writing The Outlaw of the Broads for three of the Swallows and Amazons books but she still hasn’t arrived at the end of her story. 

She begins writing in Coot Club, inspired by Tom Dudgeon setting the hired motor-cruiser, the Margoletta, adrift (for good reasons) and having to hide from the retribution of the very nasty, shouty people on board. She has even decided on chapter headings: The Secret Broad, The Outlaw in the Reeds, The Black Coot’s Feather, The Bittern’s Warning, and so on. It all sounds very promising but she is having trouble with her plot. The first chapter ends after only two paragraphs, and she is struggling to get any further with the second. The first sentence is wonderful; “Parting the reeds with stealthy, silent hand, the outlaw peered into the gathering dusk. Away across the dark water...”. But she just cannot get the words to come.

Obviously in due course, several school holidays come and go, as do several of Arthur Ransome’s books, and The Outlaw fills several of Dorothea’s notebooks. Quite a lot of it is read aloud to Titty or Roger Walker in Pigeon Post. Blank pages are torn out to be used for carrier pigeon messages, and a notebook cover is used to claim a gold mine.

Thanks to Countryfile.com