The Water and the Wild

Written by Janet Bassett-Lowke and illustrated by Lunt Roberts, our copy is undated but was seemingly published in 1946 by Puffin, the children’s imprint of Penguin books.  

 'I have seen the sea I have seen the glory I have seen its power the power of its kingdom I have swum its angers I have swum its misery I have swum its velvet flow the corals the cities underneath I have swum under islands I have swum close to shore in shallow waves and seen children playing' (Monique Roffey, The Mermaid of Black Conch)

'The mind evolved in the sea. Water made it possible. All the early stages took place in water: the origin of life, the birth of animals, the evolution of nervous systems and brains, and the appearance of the complex bodies that make brains worth having.… the early history of animals is a history of life in the sea. When animals did crawl onto dry land, they took the sea with them. All the basic activities of life occur in water-filled cells bounded by membranes, tiny containers whose insides are remnants of the sea… When you dive into the sea, you are diving into the origin of us all' (Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life', 2016)  

  'My mother taught me how to swim... In old age my mother had found a swimming technique to ‘totally give herself to the water’. This involved floating on her back, ‘emptying her thoughts’ and ‘surrendering to the flow’. She showed me her trick in the murky swimming ponds on Hampstead Heath, floating Ophelia style with the ducks and weed and leaves. I still try to do her trick, but I can only float for ten seconds before I start to sink. Likewise, when I turn my mind to my mother's death, I can only do so for 10 seconds before I start to sink’ (Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living, 2018)