Clifford Webb Bernard Meninsky and then from 1923 to 1926 he was a part-time lecturer at Central School of Art in Birmingham. Webb produced illustrations for the first two books of the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome, which were used in some 1930s editions. Because Ransome did not like those produced by Steven Spurrier for the first book, "Swallows and Amazons", those were not used in its first edition (1930), apart from the endpaper map and dust jacket. In 1931 the second edition contained Webb's illustrations, as did the first edition of the sequel, "Swallowdale". (Ransome himself was the original
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