Shepard’s illustrations have been used on national postage stamps and to advertise England itself in the 1980s English Tourist Board series, “Making a Break for the Real England.” The book has been the inspiration for a sculpture trail, one of the most successful rides in Disneyland and a musical adaptation (by Julian Fellowes) in 2016, which was the first London West End musical to raise £1 million through crowdfunding.

There are sequels, such as William Horwood’s The Willows in Winter (1993), gospel meditations, a cookery book and Robert de Board’s Counselling for Toads (1998), an introduction to psychotherapy. Milne and Alan Bennett), films, picture books (with or without stickers), pop-up books, knitting patterns, graphic novels and scholarly annotated editions. It is currently available in well over 50 editions in English: there are versions in verse, graded readers for learning English as a foreign language, audio and video adaptations, plays (notably by A.A. Although it has never been quite the international icon that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has become, Kenneth Grahame’s eccentric masterpiece can be read in Afrikaans as Die Wind in die Wilgers, in Italian as Il Vento nei Salici, in Finnish as Kaislikossa suhisee, in Portuguese as As Aventuras de Senhor Sapo and in dozens of other languages. The Wind in the Willows is one of the most famous English children’s books, one of the most famous books about animals, and a classic book about “messing about in boats.”įamous, it certainly is.

Wind in the willows unabridged