Loss and loneliness stalked Kenneth Grahame, the author of The Wind in The Willows.

 

He claimed he had only enjoyed one brief period in his life: his carefree childhood on the banks of the Thames. He becomes a reluctant adult struggling with a soul destroying job, an unstable wife and a troubled and disabled child. But it is Kenneth Grahame’s obsession with childhood that finally leads to the greatest tragedy of his life.

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This play’s action flows freely through Grahame’s memories in soliloquies and extracts from his letters. He loved nature and once said he preferred places to people, but while his stubborn belief in the innocence of rural tranquillity creates a gift of literature for an admiring world it ultimately destroys his own family.

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The Wind in the Willows has not been out of print since it was published. Kenneth Grahame’s reverence for rural comradeship is timeless, but it could not save the author himself.

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A FourTails Theatre Company Production