ARTHUR Ransome is best known as the author of Swallows and Amazons.

The much-loved children’s series of books captured an idyllic childhood that was set mainly in the Furness fells and enchanting waters around Coniston - the author’s life-long spiritual home.

However, in his autobiography, Ransome admits that he felt that he had lived through "snatches of a dozen lives."

One such period of Ransome's life was lived between 1917 and 1924, from the Russian Revolutions until the death of Lenin.

In 1913, as a young Romantic, Arthur Ransome had headed to Russia to escape an unhappy marriage and a scandal that had led to a traumatic court case in response to his biography of Oscar Wilde: he went intending to research traditional story-telling through folk lore and fairy tales. He taught himself Russian and from 1914 reported on events on the Russian front in the First World War. His reports advocated the urgent need for Britain and the allies to supply Russia with arms and resources.

Ransome, armed with the language skills and a great sympathy for the people of Mother Russia, happened to be in the right place at the right time to get himself embroiled in the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

From Coniston to the Kremlin: Arthur Ransome’s Russian Adventures, is a special exhibition staged at one of the region's cultural gems - Coniston's Ruskin Museum, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Ransome’s death on June 3, 1967, and the centenary of the Russian Revolutions.

The compelling, highly informative exhibition, starts by emphasising Ransome’s lifelong passion for the Furness fells and lakes, by displaying his ‘homing stone,’ a naturally perforated slate pebble from the Old Man, a tangible connection with Coniston which he carried with him on his travels to keep the memory vivid.

The well thought out displays introduce Ransome’s surrogate family, the Collingwoods, by showing a copy of WG Collingwood’s historical Viking romance, Thorstein of the Mere (apparently Arthur's favourite book when he was about ten), which invests the story with maps and illustrations, and introduces Peel Island with its ‘secret harbour.’

Another section of the exhibition examines his early career and life as a young Bohemian in London, from which he escaped by marrying Ivy Constance Walker. They had a daughter, Tabitha, to whom Ransome was devoted. However, Ransome and Ivy were ill-matched and their marriage soon faltered.

Fast forward to the summer of 1913 and Arthur headed to St Petersburg, determined to learn Russian in order to study and re-tell folk tales. The result was a classic: Old Peter’s Russian Tales, first published in 1916. An early copy and a new edition published this year are on display at the museum, together with a photograph of Ransome contemplating Old Peter’s world - a Russian forest in the winter of 1915.

When war was declared in 1914, Ransome considered returning from Russia to enlist, but poor eyesight and constant stomach problems ensured he would never meet the standards required for active service. Friends, including MP Francis Acland, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, suggested he could best serve his country by using his knowledge of Russia and Russian as a journalist. It took time, further delayed by serious stomach surgery, to find an employer, but, when the Daily News’ correspondent fell terminally ill, Ransome got his opportunity. He joined the press corps, wore the uniform, and acquired the necessary passes to visit the eastern front.

Among the Ruskin Museum's many exhibits is Ransome’s much-stamped passport issued on October 25 1915; a pair of brass travel candlesticks Ransome used when travelling on trains or staying in lodgings; a pass giving him permission to be in the area of the 8th Russian army on the South-West Front; his pocket compass; and his Romanian coffee mill, bought in Constanza during an air raid, which was later rescued by his Petrograd landlady in 1918, when his rooms were ransacked by the Bolshevik security police.

The exhibition also includes Ransome’s travel chess set, the first ever Carnegie Medal for Children’s Literature awarded to him in 1937 for Pigeon Post - the adventure set among Coniston’s copper mines and slate quarries - and enlargements of four important illustrations from the seventh book in his Swallow and Amazons series, We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea.

From Coniston to the Kremlin: Arthur Ransome’s Russian Adventures is an absorbing chapter in the life of a fascinating fellow.

It runs until September 3, open daily 10am-5.30pm.

For further information telephone 015394-41164.