I HAVE a guilty secret, and despite finding myself in the very situation in which it would be wise to keep my own counsel, I tell it to the very first person I meet.

I have never read any of Arthur Ransome's books, not even come close. There, I said it.

In fact, I add as I climb into the hole I'm digging, I even recall hastily switching channels the one time I almost watched a television adaptation of Swallows and Amazons.

Rodney, one of the very first members of The Arthur Ransome Society, which was formed in 1990, is not as judgmental as he could have been. I've caught him at a good time, because today is a celebration, 43 years after he last did so himself, of Ransome's birthday.

A rather wonderful cake depicting a scene from one of the series of 12 Swallows and Amazons books sits on a table at one end of a long reception room at the Devon Hotel, Exeter. It is slowly filling with South West TARS members, who are also known collectively, and ever so slightly confusingly, as Tars.

"The very fact that the books are still in print says something of their enduring appeal," says Rodney, after suggesting I begin my education as soon as possible.

"We always have something to discuss about the books, there is a great depth to them. And we might look like a lot of old greybeards, but there are some young ones who come along."

Sure, the young ones are great to have on board, if only to bring the average age down, but it is the presence of some of those 'greybeards' which lends TARS its palpable, almost magical, strength.

For the first few years of its life, TARS even had as its president Brigit Sanders.

Born Brigit Altounyan, she was reborn in Swallows and Amazons in the guise of Bridget Walker, one of the five Walker siblings who comprised the crew of the Swallow. Ransome apparently based much of the Walker characters on the real-life Altounyan clan, whose family he knew from summers spent in the Lake District.

Brigit's mother, Dora, along with her brother and sisters, taught the young Arthur to sail and it seems he returned the compliment to Brigit and her brother and sisters when they visited the lakes from their home in Syria in the late 1920s. When they left they presented him with a pair of red slippers.

And when the first book appeared in bookshops in 1930 the dedication read: 'To the Six for whom it was written, in exchange for a pair of slippers'.

Brigit died in 1999 but her husband, John, remains both very much a part of her legacy and of TARS's present.

"I think Brigit felt really very honoured to be the first president of TARS," he says. "Some of those members who met her were perhaps a little awestruck at first, but not once they got to know her. She was quite a simple person really.

"It was one of the strengths of the society that they could trot out the actual, real Bridget."

And if the Walkers' adventures seem too idyllic to be true, perhaps the reality is just as otherworldly.

"Brigit and her family had a very privileged existence," says John. "Her grandfather had a house on Lake Coniston and they used to stay there every two or three years. The family lived pretty much like Swallows and Amazons."

Endless summer days spent messing about on boats, going fishing and inventing dangers where none existed. Knowing it all actually happened is perhaps what has allowed the stories to endure.

They are not merely innocent nostalgia, but they do seem to make some Tars nostalgic for innocence.

As we assemble in another, chair-filled room to get down to the business of the AGM and the Tars gather before me, I do wonder where are all those youngsters Rodney was referring to, and also whether this is a typical collection of Tars. And just what is a typical Tar?

On the table at the front of the room is a picture, supported by a small wooden plinth, on which two flags sit on a yellow background. One of them has a blue swallow in it, the other a skull and crossbones.

To my right, seated at the front as chairman Yvonne opens the formalities, is Norman Willis, former chairman of the TUC, former president of TARS, and, as it turns out, a fairly typical Tar.

He chuckles knowingly as Yvonne calls for volunteers to fill some of the committee's roles. I suppose after you've locked horns with the Iron Lady all this probably would seem rather quaint.

Yvonne, to her credit, rushes through business, taking time to mention birthdays, including Graham who shares his big day with Ransome, and then it's over to another John and his slideshow presentation of the year just passed and places the society visited.

"Can you change the focus John?" comes a voice from the back of the room. John attempts to make a sharp picture even more so.

"Actually, on second thoughts perhaps it's my eyes." Much laughter.

Boats, pubs, walking, eating and laughing. These are apparently a few of a Tar's favourite things. But at the heart of it all, indeed of them all, is a love of the books. And few can love them more than Norman.

"I started reading the books aged 11, just a working-class boy from the Thames Valley. I couldn't physically go anywhere, the books were an escape," he tells me in a now empty room, his fellow Tars having left as one at the merest mention of a carvery lunch.

"I remember going back to the library after reading the first book and being really sad. The woman asked why I was so upset, wasn't I going to read the others? I was very happy to discover there were more.

"They were the most glorious books I had ever read. And still are for that matter.

"The main value you get from being in TARS is that you no longer have to explain why you're still reading children's books.

"And the other great thing is that we have the same number of members as the Jane Austen group, but they don't have colouring books."

I get the impression Norman could talk all day about Ransome, but we both accept a need to refuel, him more than me as I will not be delivering today's talk afterwards.

I join Susie and Di on one of the long tables inside the hotel's vast dining area. They, too, urge me to join them in Ransome's world.

"They are for children of all ages," says Susie. "My first experience was of being read them on my grandmother's knee at age four.

"My mother was so passionate about TARS. She has just died, aged 99, and she just loved the books. They cover such a huge spectrum of interest."

Di agrees. "If you read Blyton as an adult she has dated terribly. I didn't read Arthur Ransome as a child, I started reading them to my godson. When he went to bed I had to keep on to find out what happened.

"People read them and re-read them. As soon as they find out there is a society in celebration of him their faces light up."

Leading us nicely to Norman's talk, which causes a similar reaction in all those fortunate enough to be here.

"In fact," says Yvonne during her introduction of the one man here who does not need one, "you were nine years with the TUC and nine with TARS."

"It was more like 900 with them I can tell you," he mutters, loud enough for all to hear.

"And he kept his sanity through those years by reading AR," concludes Yvonne.

"You can always find new things in Arthur Ransome's books, even when you've read them a dozen times," says Norman, turning the pages of an A4 pad of written notes.

With each reference to Ransome and certain scenes and themes from his books, the Tars 'hmmm' in agreement, much as families do when someone recalls a firm but fair, feared but loved matriarch.

Most, if not all, of the references sail over my head and out the open window. "I'm not going to keep explaining to you," Norman says pointing his glasses in my direction. "Everyone else in here knows what I'm on about."

It's still fascinating, though, and helped in no small part by our speaker's tangential wanderings into a vault of priceless anecdotes filed under such headings as Nixon, Hepburn and Reagan.

He ends with a quote from Mark Twain which could have been written with TARS, and Tars for that matter, in mind. "May you always keep your youth."

He might have added: "And never pass up a slice of cake." Especially not one cut by another member of TARS royalty.

Cecily Ledgard's mother, Joyce, was Arthur Ransome's actual sister, making her his niece. She is another who was there when the society formed, and who lent it a direct link to the man himself.

"I am member number five," she tells me. "I was just two when the first book came out but I was at the inaugural meeting and I remember my brother was only interested if it helped the young.

"We used to be there with them in the Lakes. And they really lived like that. They were mainly memories from his own childhood. I enjoy them, they are just good stories."

And a good story is a good story, as both the Japanese Arthur Ransome Society, set up even before TARS, and Matthew, an American now living in London, would attest.

"I read them as a child," he says. "I still read them now. To me they're not children's books. They are books where the main characters just happen to be children."

Which makes it okay for me, an adult, to start reading them. And I will. I promise.

"I don't actually own any of them," I offer, in mitigation, as if me owning a book is in any way a precursor to me reading it.

"Hold on there a minute then," says Norman, upon overhearing the case for my defence.

He roots around in one of those recycled bags which claim to last forever (in a good way) and returns with a well-worn, distinctly well-read, Penguin paperback book.

I turn it over. On the cover is a drawing of some stick figures pulling a sled over a frozen lake. Above that is written "Winter Holiday" By Arthur Ransome.

It's the fourth book in the series, widely regarded as one of the best. "I've got more of them at home believe me," says Norman, but his gesture has taken me by surprise. What greater expression of the desire to share something close to your heart than to make a gift of the very thing itself?

So it turns out a Tar is the sort of person who would give a stranger their favourite book. Whatever Ransome might have made of this society in his honour, and the jury is out on that one, I am sure he would have approved of that.

All I can really offer in return is a solemn promise to read it and enjoy it. That turns out to be a fairly easy commitment and by the time I fall asleep that night I've already raced through three chapters.

What I will do, once I've finished it, is to pass it on again. Some secrets are best shared.