Winter Holiday (novel) Winter Holiday (novel) Winter Holiday is the fourth novel of Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons" series of children's books. It was published in 1933. In this story, the third set of major characters in the series, the Ds — Dick and Dorothea Callum—are introduced. The series' usual emphasis on boats and sailing is largely absent, as the story is set in the winter. Instead, the children's activities focus on ice skating, signalling with semaphore and Morse code, and sledging. Ransome draws on his schoolday memories of the Great Frost of 1895 when Windermere froze completely. Another major influence is Fridtjof
Amazons the attribution out of respect for his authority, Johannes Aventinus. Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" contains a country of warrior women, ruled by Queen Orontea; the epic describes an origin much like that in Greek myth, in that the women, abandoned by a band of warriors and unfaithful lovers, rallied together to form a nation from which men were severely reduced, to prevent them from regaining power. The Amazons and Queen Hippolyta are also referenced in Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" in "The Knight's Tale". Classicist Peter Walcot wrote, "Wherever the Amazons are located by the Greeks, whether it is somewhere along the