Peel Island, Cumbria with of woodland, in 1932. Peel Island is considered to be one of the origins of the fictional Wild Cat Island in the 1930 book "Swallows and Amazons" and its sequels, by Arthur Ransome. Taqui Altounyan, sister of Roger Altounyan and inspiration for one of the characters in "Swallows and Amazons", described Peel Island in her semi-biographical novel "In Aleppo Once" as "like a green tuffet, sitting in the water, the trees covering the rocks". The island also features in W. G. Collingwood's novel "Thorstein of the Mere, A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland". Ransome, at the age of
Swallows and Amazons series discussion and theorising about precise relationships. This contributes strongly to the series' air of authenticity. The first book, "Swallows and Amazons", and four sequels — "Swallowdale", "Winter Holiday," "Pigeon Post" and "The Picts and the Martyrs" — are set in and around an unnamed lake in the English Lake District. Most of the unfinished "Coots in the North" would also have been set on the lake had Ransome completed it before his death. The lake and the surrounding fells are based on an amalgam of Windermere and Coniston Water, places where Ransome spent much of his childhood and later life.