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
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