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
Elinor Lyon Lyon wrote over twenty books for children, which had some success on both sides of the Atlantic. She found they "came much more easily" than writing for adults and believes her inspiration came from "omnivorous reading". Lyon began "The House in Hiding", for example, after reading "Swallows and Amazons", because she disliked the characters within it (they were too good at everything). In response, the children in "The House in Hiding" get things wrong, but still manage to succeed eventually. The development was pinpointed in an obituary by Julia Eccleshare: "Lyon's adventures, with their strong girls and sensitive boys and