The Wind in the Willows: A Tale of Wanderlust, Male Bonding, and Timeless Delight

The Wind in the Willows: A Tale of Wanderlust, Male Bonding, and Timeless Delight

Like several classics penned during the golden age of children’s literature, The Wind in the Willows was written with a particular child in mind. Alastair Grahame was four years old when his father Kenneth — then a secretary at the Bank of England — began inventing bedtime stories about the reckless ruffian, Mr Toad, and his long-suffering friends: Badger, Rat, and Mole. Alastair, born premature and partially blind, was nicknamed 'Mouse'. Small, squinty, and beset by health problems, he was bullied at school. His rapture in the fantastic was later confirmed by his nurse, who recalled hearing Kenneth 'up in the night-nursery, telling Master Mouse some ditty or other about a toad'. The Wind in the Willows evolved from Alastair’s bedtime tales into a series of letters Grahame later sent his son while on holiday in Littlehampton. In the story, a quartet of anthropomorphised male animals wander freely in a pastoral land of leisure and pleasure — closely resembling the waterside haven of Cookham Dean where Grahame himself grew up.