Where Disney walked decades later, Wind In the Willows had already ran- and won. Oh Rattie! Mole! Toad!

Turkish delight and chocolate factories are all very well, but nothing, absolutely nothing can beat the charm of Rat's first date meal with Mole: a simply gorgeous riverside picnic, a hamper bursting with delicacies, cold meats and turkey and sandwiches and fruits and champagne, if I recall? You know, the standard sorts of food that small furry woodland animals eat. Mole couldn't believe his eyes at his good fortune and stuffed his face, and was all too eager to please when Rat asked him to pack up. Mole did so, but left a fork out. So he had to unpack and and pack it again. Then Rat pointed out a salt-cellar still lying on the grass. Oh Mole!

Later, on the river, Mole became overeager, and stupidly grabbed the oars off Rat and tried to paddle, plunging them both into the green depths of the River. Silly Mole! Oh my heart!

But what about the meal that Rat paid the young choir-singers to buy, when they accidentally went into Mole's old hole, and there was nothing to eat? Or the warm, life-saving food that Mr Badger fed them after impetuous, foolish Mole once again almost caused disaster by losing himself, and Rattie, in the snowy Woods?

But best of all- that incredible toad-in-the-hole, which I had no idea what it was, and still don't, if I'm being honest, that the goal-keeper's daughter fed Toad to get him out of his funk, and to help him escape the jail, which he had been, very justly, thrown into. Oh Toad! Sillier by far than Mole, and yet so charming, Such adventures. That River! Those Woods! Toad Hall!

My children showed zero interest in ever reading Wind in the Willows, and I have never heard it mentioned since those golden years of my childhood reading. I know it can't have fallen fully out of fashion, because once in a while I see little memes of Toad, Rattie and Mole, in some delightful celebration of rest, ease, and friendship, fly by on my phone. So I know they're still alive in people's heart somewhere, I'm just not sure where.