The best picnic scenes in literature

Dust down the luncheon basket, roll out the rug, and pass me a pork pie... it's picnic season. Like pubs, there is something so quintessentially British about the summer picnic - lazing in dappled sunlight with friends or family, eating, drinking, checking the sky for rain.

No wonder so many many great authors who have written about them. After all, there are plenty of writers who have used the humble picnic to place a memorable scene. Here is a selection of some of the best picnics in literature. 

The Iron Man by Ted Hughes (1968)

It's a pretty standard family picnic, at first, on top of a “lovely hill”. “They spread a tablecloth on the grass,” writes Hughes. “They set down the plate of sandwiches, a big pie, a roasted chicken, a bottle of milk, a bowl of tomatoes, a bagful of boiled eggs, a dish of butter and a loaf of bread, with cheese and salt and cups. The father got his stove going to boil some water for tea, and they all lay back on rugs munching food and waiting for the kettle to boil, under the blue sky.”

Idyllic. Only, then the ground begins to rumble. The table cloth begins to sag in the middle. “As they watched the sag got deeper and all the food fell into it, dragging the tablecloth right down into the ground.”

Suddenly a great iron head emerges from the hole, and an iron giant judderingly digs himself out. The family run in horror. Sanwiches ruined.

Five Go Off in a Caravan by Enid Blyton (1946)

It would be daft to deny that some of Enid Blyton's work is problematic when it comes to her views on race and sex. Her views on food, however, court no such controversy. Her vivid, homely, sumptuously drawn high teas feel as nostalgic as a long queue outside the butchers.

And there are few passages in any text that better evoke the lazy, sun-drenched, Gingham-clothed pleasure of an evening picnic than when Timmy, George, Julian, Dick and Anne travel to Merran Lake for a spot of camping in Five Go Off in a Caravan.

“Soon they were all sitting on the rocky ledge, which was still warm, watching the sun go down into the lake. It was the most beautiful evening, with the lake as blue as a cornflower and the sky flecked with rosy clouds. They held their hard-boiled eggs in one hand and a piece of bread and butter in the other, munching happily. There was a dish of salt for everyone to dip their eggs into. ‘I don’t know why, but the meals we have on picnics always taste so much nicer than the ones we have indoors,’ said George.”

Well, quite.

Illustration by Mike Ellis.