The Daily Mail carried a lengthy feature on Saturday about the origins of The Wind in the Willows. Talk about a dysfunctional family!

Unable to fit in with boys his own age, Alastair (Grahame’s son) was removed from Rugby school after just six weeks and sent to Eton where he suffered a nervous breakdown. In January 1918, he went up to Christ Church, Oxford, after Grahame used his contacts to secure him a place. But, with his bad eyesight, Alastair’s existence was increasingly miserable and solitary. On May 7, 1920, after dining in college, he lay face down on a railway track leading across Oxford’s Port Meadow and was decapitated by a train.