THE TALE OF SQUIRREL NUTKIN

Beatrix Potter, 1903

Beatrix Potter’s first publication – The Tale of Peter Rabbit – could take place in any rural garden in the land. But there’s no mistaking the realworld setting of her follow-up, for this is the first work in which the author immortalises her own beloved Lake District. In the summer of 1901, Potter stayed at Lingholm, near Portinscale on the shore of Derwent Water. There she sketched the lake and its islands, and from the drawings came the story of an intrepid platoon of red squirrels who build little rafts to cross to Owl Island (in reality, St Herbert’s Island), where they beg permission from the somnolent owl Old Brown to gather nuts on his turf. The deal is ruined by the impertinent Squirrel Nutkin, who declines to be nice to Old Brown and instead teases him with a series of increasingly irksome riddles – with predictably violent results.

Whatever you make of Nutkin himself, the evocation of the island is both beautiful and deadly accurate. Many of the subsequent books contain real Lakeland settings: the tales of Jemima Puddle-Duck, Samuel Whiskers, Tom Kitten and Pigling Bland all unfold at her home, Hill Top Farm; Mrs Tiggy-Winkle lives in the Newlands Valley; and Jeremy Fisher’s tale takes place at Moss Eccles Tarn. But that image of the squirrels setting out across Derwent Water, using their tails as sails, is where it all began. WALK HERE: Take the Keswick Launch to Nichol End, walk southwards round the lakeshore to Lodore, and catch the launch back (four miles, www. keswicklaunch.co.uk): you’ll pass Lingholm, where Potter stayed, and see the lake just as the squirrels did.