Radio prog - LTC Rolt

[Water Rat.]

Radio Four - prog on canals with LTC Rolt - 11am. Monday 8th November.

 

Listen again on ipayer if you miss it.

[Nightwatch]

Got it on now.

[ditchcrawler]

Got it on now.

Missed the first 10 minutes and then got a telephone call,I hope its on listen again tomorrow

[Nightwatch]

The programme was quite good mainly about LTC Rolt with contribution from others including Sonia.

 

Tried twice to read Narrowboat, couldn't get on with it. Didn't realise there was more to Tom Rolt than Narrowboats.

 

Worth a listen.

 

Martyn

[Derek R.]

The programme was quite good mainly about LTC Rolt with contribution from others including Sonia.

 

Tried twice to read Narrowboat, couldn't get on with it. Didn't realise there was more to Tom Rolt than Narrowboats.

 

Worth a listen.

 

Martyn

 

If you found 'Narrowboat' difficult, read 'Landscape With Canals', Landscape With Machines' (particularly good) and 'Landscape With Figures'. These three make up the trilogy which encompasses his life, and a fascinating journey it was. I'll listen to the prog. later.

 

Derek

[Nightwatch]

Thanks Derek

 

I trust you are saying they are a better read. I will try those if i see them available.

 

I will look in charity shops and the like and then anticipate spending money via Amazon/Play.com

 

Martyn

[RLWP]

Thanks Derek

 

I trust you are saying they are a better read. I will try those if i see them available.

 

I will look in charity shops and the like and then anticipate spending money via Amazon/Play.com

 

Martyn

 

I find the easiest book to read of Rolt's is "Railway Adventure" about taking over the Tal-y-llyn railway. Fascinating stuff, like getting caught in a deadly embrace by the valve gear of Dolgoch

 

Richard

[Tim Lewis]

Thanks Derek

 

I trust you are saying they are a better read. I will try those if i see them available.

 

I will look in charity shops and the like and then anticipate spending money via Amazon/Play.com

 

Martyn

 

Most of Rolt's books have been recently reprinted in paperback, we have a number of them in the shop in the London Canal Museum.

 

My personal favorites are the biographies of Brunel and the Stephensons along with 'Red for Danger' - a history of railway accidents.

 

Tim

[oldironsides]

Rolt was the Samuel Smiles of the 20th. century. No doubt about it, we have many heritage railways, the canal system, and the way of using volunteers to run them which are all as result of the campaigning of Tom Rolt.

 

He was one of the main founders of modern day industrial archaeology and managed to influence the thinking about the treatment of industrial heritage since WWII. He managed to move thinking away from the rural idyll traditionalism which was prevalent after the war.

 

His biography of I K Brunel is probably his best book.

[Pluto]

Rolt was the Samuel Smiles of the 20th. century. No doubt about it, we have many heritage railways, the canal system, and the way of using volunteers to run them which are all as result of the campaigning of Tom Rolt.

 

He was one of the main founders of modern day industrial archaeology and managed to influence the thinking about the treatment of industrial heritage since WWII. He managed to move thinking away from the rural idyll traditionalism which was prevalent after the war.

 

His biography of I K Brunel is probably his best book.

My favourite is High Horse Riderless, though Sonia says it was a young man's book. It has something of Priestley's English Journey in it, and reflects Tom's great interest in craft skills and how they fit into society. He thought that Winterstoke was his best book, and it was probably the one which took most time to write.

[RLWP]

<snip>

 

My personal favorites are the biographies of Brunel and the Stephensons along with 'Red for Danger' - a history of railway accidents.

 

Tim

 

I have a late edition of Red for Danger (another of my favourite books) that has some additional material by another writer. You get strange changes of pace and style at the ends of each chapter where the later material is added. Very weird

 

Richard

[Joseph]

Morning

 

The secondary author was Geoffrey Kichenside, who (from memories of looking at Charles Hadfield's private papers, which I don't have with me) worked for David & Charles. It does make for an odd text, but I suppose it made the book more saleable as more up-to-date. I don't know if Mr Kichenside is still with us.

 

I listened to the radio programme with interest. I felt that it conveyed the breadth of Tom Rolt's interests but not really the depth. My better half commented that if a listener had never heard of Tom Rolt and his work, the programme would not (sadly) inspire further inquiry. She is new to waterways and conservation, and she is nearly always right, so I defer to her judgement! At least it avoided the impression that Tom Rolt (and fellow-enthusiasts, by implication) was some sort of cheerless obsessive, to which that over-worked, abusive and derogatory term "anorak" could be applied. Some of his enthusiasm and passion were conveyed, and oddly it was his son Richard's description of his father's involvement with the engine for the Alvis - that marriage of science, technique and craft - that I found the most enlightening part. (Oddly, because I am almost entirely unmoved by veteran cars, whereas waterways and the built environment are lifelong interests).

 

I've recently been involved with a TV programme (many questions about Tom Rolt and waterways compaigning), and it is very easy for contributors to be put on the spot and their improvisations to be extracted as definitive. However, I was surprised to hear that Tom converted Cressy from a hull (when the original conversion was organised by his uncle Kyrle Willans with further work by Mr Fortune from Leicester), and that it had a steam engine (must have missed all those stops to take on for coal...). Oh well.........

 

My own favourite of Tom Rolt's works? Not Narrow Boat, which when I first read it as a small boy just read like a travel book, an impression hard to shake off. The Inland Waterways of England provides a portrait, in its incidental and tacit assumptions of a world that has gone. But it is the autobiographies that really provide insights, and recuperate works that are passing into the history of literature. Tom's prose is lyrical and enjoyable, but there has been much work since, especially on Brunel, with (I think) three more biographies, one a conscious response to his own study.

 

I hope that this "year of Rolt" inspires lasting interest in his work, and especially the many matters about which he (and with many others, now, many inspired by him) cared.

 

Joseph

[MoominPapa]

I've recently been involved with a TV programme (many questions about Tom Rolt and waterways compaigning), and it is very easy for contributors to be put on the spot and their improvisations to be extracted as definitive. However, I was surprised to hear that Tom converted Cressy from a hull (when the original conversion was organised by his uncle Kyrle Willans with further work by Mr Fortune from Leicester), and that it had a steam engine (must have missed all those stops to take on for coal...). Oh well.........

I believe that the first conversion did have steam engine, but it was replaced my a petrol engine (from a Ford model T?) either before or at the time that Rolt took over the boat. At the outbreak of war, the engine was converted to burn TVO (tractor vapourising oil). This conversion is described in Rolt's work, either Narrow Boat or his autobiography.

 

MP.

[Water Rat.]

 

 

Tried twice to read Narrowboat, couldn't get on with it.

 

 

 

Martyn

 

I am glad it is not just me, I have tried to read it too, but have given up, twice.

[Derek R.]

I am glad it is not just me, I have tried to read it too, but have given up, twice.

 

I think it's one of those books that appeals most to people who have never previously been involved with the canals, as a sort of in depth 'discovery' book, it works well then.

For those having having passed that point, the 'Landscape' trilogy may suit better. I must confess, I have had difficulty reading it after being involved, yet 'Landscape with Canals' I can read again and again. His little ghost story book is quite good too, as is his 'Victorian Engineering'.

Edited November 11, 2010 by Derek R.

[Max Sinclair]

I think it's one of those books that appeals most to people who have never previously been involved with the canals, as a sort of in depth 'discovery' book, it works well then.

For those having having passed that point, the 'Landscape' trilogy may suit better. I must confess, I have had difficulty reading it after being involved, yet 'Landscape with Canals' I can read again and again. His little ghost story book is quite good too, as is his 'Victorian Engineering'.

I have just obtained a copy of Worcestershire and there is a fine photograph of Mr and Mrs Charlie Ballinger on horse boat Francis going up the Worcester Birmingham.

Edited November 15, 2010 by Max Sinclair