Guest Blog: Ciaran McConville

Rose Youth Theatre has grown exponentially. We now have 1,000 students across several different courses in hubs all over the borough. There's rarely a moment outside school hours when the Rose isn't full of children.

Adapting The Wind in the Willows for the stage has been such a circuitous and unexpected process. I reread the book last Christmas and understood, but couldn't define, its enduring appeal. As a novel, it's gloriously messy - at times conventional and at others surprisingly radical. Kenneth Grahame switches genres mid-chapter, offers no consistency on the physics of his fictional world, and his views on class, sex and gender all feel stuffy by today's standards.