There should be no hesitancy doubting his existence R. G. Collingwood is remembered today as a philosopher, a man with a wide range of interests, the core of whose work is in the Idealist tradition. He died in 1943 and although his work has subsequently not been widely celebrated the promotion of it revived in 1994 with the establishment of the Collingwood Society. He is remembered by university historians for his ambitious Idea of History (1946), an extended essay on the philosophies underpinning historical discourse. Many students of history remember his Roman Britain and the English Settlements (OUP, 1936 with J. N. L. Myres), which was a key text for thirty years. And his boyhood is remembered, by proxy, among those brought up on Swallows and Amazons; he and his siblings being the template for Arthur Ransome’s child adventurers.