The Picts and the Martyrs they can be questioned, and Nancy manages to save the Great Aunt some embarrassment for which she gets praised in a letter to her mother. Ransome's wife Evgenia hated the book while it was being written, but his mother Edith persuaded him to publish it. Genia was often discouraging about his books while he was writing them. The Picts and the Martyrs The Picts and the Martyrs is the eleventh book in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series of children's books. It was published in 1943. This is the last completed book set in the Lake District and features the
Arthur Ransome foreign affairs, and also writing the "Country Diary" column on fishing. On the Ransomes return to England, "Racundra" was sold to the yachting author Kaines Adlard Coles who sailed her back to England. By the late 1920s, Ransome had settled in the Lake District because he had decided not to accept a position as a full-time foreign correspondent with the "Guardian". Instead he wrote "Swallows and Amazons" in 1929—the first of the series that made his reputation as one of the best English writers of children's books. Ransome apparently based the Walker children (the "Swallows") in the book in part