Generations of Arthur Ransome readers have asked the same questions after finishing his Swallows and Amazons books. Are the places true? Are the people real? Christina Hardyment decided to find out. Among the boxes of papers left to Leeds University n Arthur Ransome's death she found a large cabin trunk. Its tattered steamship labels at once betrayed its true identity. It was Captain Flint's trunk from Swallows and Amazons, which had been stolen by burglars from the houseboat and discovered by Titty on Cormorant Island. Inside there was no Mixed Moss, the book that made Captain Flint's fortune, but instead a wealth of old logs, diaries, photographs and sketchbooks which signposted the trail towards the reality behind the stories. Following up clues found in the Leeds archives, the author has sailed in Amazon's wake to Wild Cat Island and climbed Ransome's Kanchenjunga near Coniston. She has prospected among the old High Tops copper mines, which exist today, and even signaled from the actual Winter holiday observatory. Aided and abetted by her own four children, she went in search of Swallowdale, explored the Coot Club haunts on the Norfolk Broads, and camped in the muddy wilderness of the real Secret Water. Incidents in Ransome's own life have been matched to those he wove into his books; the children he knew and who sailed with him have told her that they remember him. She has talked to Titty, Roger and Bridget (who took some of the photographs for the book), untangled the mystery of Nancy Blackett, met Squashy hat's daughter, examined the mastodon's splatchers at his home on Skipper Island and tracked down the real Daisy, Dum and Dee. Until now no one could have guessed at all the influences that were brought to bear on the Swallows and Amazons adventures. Ransome's own boats, most of which are still being sailed with pride by their present owners, contributed greatly to the authenticity of his writing, though nothing reveals more about his brilliant craftsmanship than the secrets that emerge from his working notebooks - the origins of Peter Duck on a Norfolk wherry in winter, the Clay family's contribution to We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, or the ornithologist Myles North's part in the writing of Great Northern? In all Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint's Trunk provides not only an essential companion to the Ransome books but also a quest that will make magic of reality for the millions of readers of all ages who may be tempted to follow Christina Hardyment's trail of adventure after her.