Saturday, September 20, 2008

Children's writers and their politics

The news that J. K. Rowling has given the Labour Party £1m leads me to think of other children's writers and their politics.

My own boyhood favourite Malcolm Saville voted Labour in 1945, but later became chairman of Lewes Conservatives.

E. Nesbit and her husband Hubert Bland were among the founders of the Fabian Society. They jointly edited the society's journal and even had a son named Fabian.

Arthur Ransome was a journalist in Russia during the Revolution and married Trotsky's secretary, but his own politics in the era remain a matter of debate.

3 comments:

Niles said...

Did you ever read the Willard Price Adventure books? For some reason these popped into my head the other day.

Jonathan Calder said...

I remember that his books were advertised in the back of my Armada paperbacks, but I don't think I read any of them.

Anonymous said...

Michael Rosen, the children's laureate, is of course somewhere out to the left of Ghengis Khan.