What’s On

Where East and West collide in a story about friendship and family, love and jealousy, with a good measure of sailing thrown in!

Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons is a classic book about children having adventures on a lake. The Walker family have always been depicted as quintessentially English but what is not widely known is that Ransome modelled his characters on an Anglo-Armenian family from Aleppo, Syria.

This joyous actor-musician production delves into the fascinating but often fractured relationship between the British author and the family who inspired him to write his iconic book for children.

Although a work of fiction, this production has been extensively researched using letters and diary entries from the Arthur Ransome archive, University of Leeds, Special Collections; letters in The Arthur Ransome Society (TARS) archives; numerous publications and testimonies by Altounyan and Guzelian family members.

There will be a pre-show talk by the writer Karen Babayan at 6.30pm and a post show ‘Circle of Life’ circle dance event with dance artist Shakeh Major Tchilingirian. All welcome.

Photo Credit Asadour Guzelian.