The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Like most British children, I grew up knowing the characters of gentle Mole, brash Toad, firm old Badger and the more forgettable, everyman Rat. The characters appeared on the periphery of my attention, speeches in drama classes being derived from dramatisation, BBC animated adaptations occasionally being replayed early in the mornings, simplified versions of the book lying about unread. But I had never actually picked up and read the book until I decided to on a whim back in uni. I began going to sports clubs less frequently in Cambridge, which meant I bathed less there, which finally meant that I didn’t finish the book until now. And I’m extremely glad I read it.

Grahame is just a very good, incredibly modern writer who expertly writes four instantly-recognisable characters. Crucially, though, he does not make his animals loveable and without fault, but rather flawed, silly and bumbling sorts, who have layers of complexity to them, so that the mild-mannered mole may be devious or selfish, the harmless Toad may genuinely be quite vicious, or the paternal badger may not always say the right thing. And most of all it is Ratty who grows and changes over the course of the book, from somewhat boring but well-meaning fellow to a really admirable and caring individual. Milne adapted the story for the stage, but while he may have had a better grasp of humour and innocence, his world certainly didn’t have the nuance or complexity of Grahame’s.

This is not to say that the humour here is lacking. It is abundant, and quite brilliant. Toad’s adventures are the most immediately funny, the undermining of his absurd puffery always entertaining, and there is one outstanding moment where the comedy jump-cut is pre-empted in the literary world by quite some years (though if there is a precedent I do not know), as an indiscretion immediately leads into a courtroom scene. There are many laughs to be had, though, and a great deal of warm smiles at expressions of friendship.

Even with all this praise, though, the book would have been a solid, well-written and deftly characterised little novel with just the right, loose balance between portraying its characters as humans and as animals, but for the fact that all of a sudden, the chapter ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ hits the reader directly in the centre of the forehead with such implacable force that the work becomes unforgettable. What a magnificent piece of writing, in the centre of a generally conventional little children’s story. The powerfully poetic descriptive passages, the mysticism, the hallucinogenic strangeness that no doubt inspired Pink Floyd to name their first album after the chapter, and the feeling afterwards of having been transported somewhere wholly unexpected and unsettling will stay with me always. Grahame flexes literary muscles and shows a strength that I could never have anticipated.

Without that, the book is a warm and nostalgic children’s classic. With it, it becomes something I greatly respect.