The Wind in the Willows: a quiet bedtime book about the river, Mole and Water Rat

If today was too loud, this book is the antidote. The Wind in the Willows is the quietest, coziest of English children’s books: about Mole, Water Rat, the vain Mr Toad and the river they live beside. It has almost no plot in the usual sense — which is exactly why it reads so well at bedtime: it doesn’t rush you on, it lulls you. Kenneth Grahame drew the river from the real Thames, and you can reach it in an hour by train from London.

An extract

The book begins:

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“The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.”

He then abandons the cleaning, scrambles up into the open — and sees the river for the first time. And the book’s most famous line, repeated by everyone who loves boats, is Water Rat’s: “there is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908). The text is in the public domain. The full English text is free on Project Gutenberg (link below).

Why it is worth reading tonight

It is a book about home, friendship and the turning seasons by a river — and about how good it is to have a burrow, a fire and friends next door. Children love Toad’s adventures with his motor-cars; adults love ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’, one of the most lyrical chapters in all English prose. Chapter one is about fifteen minutes aloud — just one evening, and enough to tell whether this is your book.

About the author

Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932) was Secretary of the Bank of England by day and wrote in the evenings. The Wind in the Willows grew out of the bedtime stories he told his son Alastair. It was published in 1908, soon after Grahame left the bank. He is buried in Oxford, at Holywell Cemetery, beside his son.

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Where to go

The Thames in Berkshire. The river of the book is the Thames by the villages of Cookham Dean and Pangbourne, where Grahame lived. In Pangbourne he spent his last years at Church Cottage and died there. It is easy to reach: a train from Paddington to Pangbourne station takes about an hour, then walk along the Thames Path. The path and riverbank are free and always open — this is the river itself.

The grave in Oxford. Kenneth Grahame is buried at Holywell Cemetery in central Oxford (free to enter). The epitaph was written by his cousin, the novelist Anthony Hope.

Where to get it

Free and legal. The full English text is on Project Gutenberg, free to read and download. To find it in a library near you, use the Library Hub Discover catalogue. Links below.

To buy. An English edition is in every bookshop in Britain. For the Russian translation (the classic one by Irina Tokmakova is under copyright) try the Russian-language bookshops: children’s stock at Bookashka, Russian and English sections at Notre Locus. Check stock and price on the shop’s own site.