The Real Kenneth Grahame: The Tragedy Behind The Wind and the Willows

The Real Kenneth Grahame

The Tragedy Behind The Wind in the Willows

by Elisabeth Galvin

Pub Date 30 Nov 2021 |

Pen & Sword, White Owl

Biographies & Memoirs | History| Nonfiction (Adult)

I am reviewing a copy of The Real Kenneth Grahame: The Tragedy Behind The Wind in the Willows through Pen & Sword, White Owl and Netgalley:

Kenneth Grahame who was born in 1859 and died in 1932 was a Scot who wrote one of the most quintessentially English books. When he was only four years old his Mother died, and his father became an alcoholic, so Kenneth grew up with his grandmother who lived on the banks of the beloved River Thames. Forced to abandon his dreams of studying at Oxford, he was accepted as a clerk at the Bank of England where he became one of the youngest men to be made company secretary. In 1903 Kenneth narrowly escaped death when he was mistaken for the Bank’s governor and shot at several times. He wrote secretly in his spare time for magazines and became a contemporary of contributors including Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw and WB Yeats. Kenneth’s first book, Pagan Papers (1893) initiated his success, followed by The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898), which…