Astrid Lindgren, creator of Pippi Longstocking
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The best-selling author of How to Train Your Dragon, Cressida Cowell, explains her love for the Swedish author, Astrid Lindgren. Born in 1907, Lindgren invented the Pippi Longstocking stories to tell to her children during the war years, only writing them down for a publisher years later.
Following the immense success of Pippi, Astrid Lindgren went on to write Emil of Lonneberga, Children of Noisy Village and the fantasy novels Mio, my son; Ronia the Robber's Daughter; and The Brother's Lionheart. But it was Pippi who brought her fame and fortune. She was a particular hit in post-war Germany, where it is claimed the stories helped de-nazify the Hitler youth.
In the 70s and 80s Lindgren began campaigning on child, environmental and animal rights, influencing Swedish government policy and becoming known as the 'Grandmother of all Sweden'. She is still very much adored there today.
Cressida Cowell is a recent children's laureate. Also joining the discussion is Johan Palmberg, Lindgren's great grandson, who recalls. "She had this understanding of what a child might be interested in ... she would be the first one to climb the trees and have the children follow her up"
Produced in Bristol by Ellie Richold
Image courtesy of Jacob Forsell
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to introduce myself. |
| 0:03.7 | My name's Stevie Middleton and I'm a BBC Commissioner for a Load of Sport Podcasts. |
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| 0:35.8 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:44.6 | The subject of today's great lives is Sweden's best-known children's author. |
| 0:49.8 | Her books have sold 165 million copies and have been translated into more than 100 languages. |
| 0:57.6 | Her most famous character is internationally known and adored. |
| 1:02.8 | She was 9 years old and she lived all alone. |
| 1:06.1 | She had neither mother nor father, which was really rather nice. |
| 1:09.4 | For in this way there was no one to tell her to go to bed just when she was having most |
| 1:12.5 | fun and no one to make her take cod liver oil and she felt like eating peppermints. |
| 1:17.7 | And the most remarkable thing about her was her strength. |
| 1:21.6 | She was so strong that in all the world there was no policeman as strong as she. |
| 1:26.9 | She could have lived at a whole horse if she had wanted to. |
| 1:29.4 | And there were times when she did want to. |
... |
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