The library is dedicated to the memory of Brigit Sanders, First President of TARS. Scroll down to find out how the library began.
We have a substantial library of books and other materials, most of which are available for borrowing by members either by post or at some events. There are more than 120 by Ransome alone (admittedly including translations).
The full catalogue, can be seen below.
Each spring a Library Update is published, with reviews and news of developments in the Library.
Borrowing Books or visiting the library: this email address is not currently monitored tarslib@arthur-ransome.org
Other resources available to Regions are listed below. The cost is just the carriage from the current holder’s home to the new user’s home, who would then need to find the space to store it till the next person wants it. These include:
TARS Flag Usually held at the home of the Chair of the next Region to host the IAGM. Currently held at Northern Region.
TARS Banner – a long upright roller banner. Each Region should have one, but available to borrow.
TARS Pull-up information banners – suitable for indoor displays at public-facing events. One banner informs about TARS and how to join and three tell the story of AR and his works.
Captain Flint’s Trunk – usually used for the Outlaw’s Den at IAGMs but available for other events, contains colouring equipment, some other games, things to keep particularly younger children absorbed.
PA System – usually used for IAGMs but available for other events. Microphone, amplifier and speakers in a box 40 x 9 x 17 cm. Currently near J17 of M4 webmaster@arthur-ransome.org
Please let me know of other things the Regions can share….event tents? BBQs? webmaster@arthur-ransome.org
In celebration of the Library’s 20th birthday, Margaret Ratcliffe, who started it all, was asked to write about its beginnings, and here is her response, in her own inimitable style. We particularly love the sentence ‘… so I went to Los Angeles to acquire a copy of the list ….’ Find out more about that below; Margaret started as she meant to go on, with total dedication.
Anyone interested in seeing the list to which she refers can get in touch with me.
I can’t remember how it first came to my attention that AR’s books had been sold to the Fullerton Library at the University of Southern California – around 5000 titles. They had a comprehensive list. So I went to Los Angeles to acquire a copy of the list and see the volumes they had retained in their Special Collections. I wanted to read as Ransome had read but I was never going to be able to afford 5000 titles. And so the germ of the idea to form a TARS Library was formed.
Evgenia had left the books Arthur valued to Abbot Hall and I needed a list of those too. Jim and Judy Andrews kindly volunteered and spent many bitterly cold winter hours at Abbot Hall compiling this list.
To read the rest of this interesting article go to the Signals page and read it in the April 2020 edition. (easier to read in the pdf of the current version, but at a later date you will have to read it in the archive version.)
