The Wind in the Willows and reading out loud

The Wind in the Willows right? Kenneth Grahame, 1908. We all know the children’s story inside-out. Mole and Ratty and gruff Badger and conceited Mr Toad with his motorcars and all their adventures. I picked up the book as an adult - I can’t remember why - and it wasn’t what I expected. This week I have been reading it again and it is again astonishing. I mean… let me share some of the prose with you. This is when Mole encounters the river for the first time. Green turf sloped down to either edge, brown snaky tree-roots gleamed below the surface of the quiet water, while ahead of them the silvery shoulder and foamy tumble of a weir, arm-in-arm with a restless dripping mill-wheel, that held up in its turn a grey-gabled mill-house, filled the air with a soothing murmur of sound, dull and smothery, yet with little clear voices speaking up cheerfully out of it at intervals. It was so very beautiful that the Mole could only hold up both forepaws and gasp, “O my! O my! O my!” There’s a…