Kenneth Grahame

KENNETH GRAHAME was born in Edinburgh in 1859 and grew up in Berkshire. He started work at the Bank of England in 1879 and retired as its Secretary in 1908, the year that The Wind in the Willows was first published. The book was based on bedtime stories he told his son Alistair, who is said to have been the inspiration for the much-loved character of Toad.E.H. SHEPARD was born in London in 1879. He won a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools and later worked for Punch magazine as a cartoonist and an illustrator. Shepard’s characterful illustrations of Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad, first published in 1931, have become an inseparable part of The Wind in the Willows, and are classics in their own right.