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
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.