O one puts on a picnic with quite as much panache as Ratty. The cold chicken Kenneth Grahame’s affable and generous water vole brings to the little blue-and-white boat, alongside ‘cold tongue cold ham cold beef pickled gherkins salad French rolls cress sandwiches potted meat ginger beer lemonade soda water’ has companion Mole ‘in ecstasies. “This is too much!”’ However, beyond the extravagances of this particular feast in , what also sets it apart is the ‘fat wicker luncheon-basket’ in which the edibles are encased. How much more beguiling surely than the ‘parcel’ protecting the sandwiches that Mr Ramsay opens and shares in Virginia Woolf’s or even the undisclosed paraphernalia at on that ‘very fine day’ at Box Hill, during which Jane Austen chooses to explore the tense interplay between her fractious characters rather than depict wicker baskets.
