KENNETH GRAHAME in The Reading Room at Kitchen Sink Dramas

The Reading Room

KENNETH GRAHAME

(1859-1932)

Grahame’s rather eccentric life was blighted by tragedy, starting with the death of his mother when he was five. This resulted in his removal from Scotland to the home of his maternal grandmother in Cookham Dene, Berkshire. The two years Grahame spent here, close to the River Thames, were his ‘golden age’, and one he later sought to recreate in his prose. Although his career initially took the virginial and fastidious Grahame far from his beloved river to London where he clerked for the Bank of England, he began writing essays and stories that were published in literary journals. His classic children’s tale began, as so many do, as a bedtime story written for his only son, Alistair. Alistair apparently had a fascination with motorcars and a somewhat pompous disposition, prompting rumours that he provided the inspiration for his father’s most enduring fictional character. (Tragically, Alistair would later commit suicide at the age of 20.) The Wind in the Willows was, unbelievably, turned down by every publisher it was sent to. Finally published by Methuen in 1908 to almost universally scathing reviews, it wasn’t until the American President Theodore Roosevelt publicly endorsed the book that it became a critical and commercial success.