About The Wind in the Willows

As I was mentioning a few weeks ago, I was reading The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. I finished it since then and I wanted to blog about it again. As I had mentioned, I first came to this work of fiction through the TV series adaptation, which is one of my childhood's favourite memories. Nothing beats stop motion. It was then, it is still now, the most English thing I ever watched. I cannot say I was disappointed by the source material, but I did not enjoy it as much as I had hoped. Not sure what was lacking. I still had fun reading it, and it was nice meeting again Rat, Mole, Badger and Toad. And it is still the most English thing you can ever read (and I know Grahame was a Scot). There is just something about it that is very old England and timeless, with an appreciation of simple pleasures and a defiance of modernity. It is the book for the Anglophile and for the shameless nostalgic.

(Re)disccovering The Wind in the Willows

Back when I was a child, I was quite fond of the stop motion animated series based on The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. It was one of these programs contributed to feed
my love for England and for British culture. I was watching it around this time of year, during the summer holidays, as there was a channel specialized in children programs that was showing new cartoons, and old classics or, in this case, adaptations of old children classics. It gave me an impression of England, shamelessly nostalgic, that reality could never quite shake off. So this year, I bought the original novel and I have starte reading it this month. It is like rediscovering friend from years ago you haven't seen in decades.

The Wind in the Willows

I took this picture last weekend, you can see a willow (duh!) on the other side of the Thames.I took a few snapshots with my phone for the "photo du mois", something I do with the fellow French speaking blogging community. The theme this month was water, so well, I tried to take as many decent pics as I could from my poor phone camera. You can see the one chosen here. I did not use this one, because I wanted it to upload it on a different occasion. With the breeze that was on and the willow, the image obviously reminded me of The Wind in the Willows. I have never read the original children's book of Kenneth Grahame, but as a child I LOVED the stop-motion TV series they had made. So young, and already nostalgic. I say this as the stories had a very nostalgic feel. I don't think I saw the original movie, but I can find it on YouTube. I still get goosebumps listening to the credit theme song, which I have decided to upload here.