New touring play looks at the turbulent life of Wind In The Willows author Kenneth Grahame

A play in two-acts, approximately 100 minutes, it plays Ovingdean (Village Hall, October 8); Eastbourne (The Grove Theatre, October 13, 14); Hurstpierpoint (Players Theatre, October 15); Lindfield (King Edward Hall, October 22); Lewes (All Saints Centre, October 29); Rottingdean (Village Hall, November 12); London (Drayton Arms, November 13, 14); and Cookham Dean (Village Hall, November 26). To book tickets for the tour venues, visit ticketsource.co.uk/lostinthewillows

Spokesman Tom Jobbins said: “Loss and loneliness stalked Kenneth Grahame, the author of The Wind in The Willows.

"He claimed he had only enjoyed one brief period in his life: his carefree childhood on the banks of the Thames. He becomes a reluctant adult struggling with a soul-destroying job, an unstable wife and a troubled and disabled child.

"But it is Kenneth Grahame’s obsession with childhood that finally leads to the greatest tragedy of his life. The Wind in the Willows has not been out of print since it was published. Kenneth Grahame’s reverence for rural comradeship is timeless, but while his stubborn belief in the innocence of rural tranquillity creates a gift of literature for an admiring world, it ultimately destroys his own family.”

Playwright Christine Foster added: “When I read a biography of Kenneth Grahame, I was amazed at the painful contrast between this imagined idyllic existence and the disjointed, dispirited life of loss and loneliness that he actually led.

"It seemed to me that this tragic irony was inherently dramatic and also somehow inevitable. In the play I want to celebrate a gloriously gifted writer whose stubborn love affair with jolly fellowship and rural tranquillity created an extraordinary literary gift to the world while, at the same time, explore how it came to destroy his own family by robbing them of the gift of himself.”

Margot Jobbins, director and FourTails Theatre Company producer, said: “Plays for me must be well written, explore interesting themes and ideally be character driven. I found this exploration of the life of Kenneth Grahame to be fascinating – pulling back the curtain on a literary figure whose writing we love, but whose personal life painted a much different and darker picture.”

Lost in the Willows, written by Christine Foster, directed by Margot Jobbins, features Neil James playing Kenneth Grahame; Abi McLoughlin playing Elspeth Grahame; Robert Cohen playing multiple characters; and Laura Fausner playing multiple characters.

Christine Foster is the author or more than 50 play. In 2022 she won the Sarah Glospell New Play Award. A former resident of Brighton, she is well known in the area for her work with The Kipling Festival in Rottingdean, near Brighton.