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In 1926, Tom Rolt who was then sixteen years old, abandoned his public school education. Having taken a job with a small firm of agricultural engineers, he realised that he had found his life’s calling. But the way ahead was neither smooth nor easy. Having secured a premium apprenticeship, the firm which took him on foundered and although he eventually qualified as a mechanical engineer, the 1930s depression made it almost impossible to find regular employment.

Nothing daunted, with the encouragement of his mysterious companion ‘Cara’, he turned to writing. His literary career flourished alongside his association with the Vintage Sports Car Club, the Inland Waterways Association and the Talyllyn Railway. Between his Inland Waterways Association and Talyllyn phases, Angela, his first wife, left him to join Billy Smart’s Circus, and Sonia –an actress-turned-boatwoman – would become his second wife. Over the course of his life, he produced over thirty books, their subject matters ranging from canals and railways to engineering biography; company histories; a collection of accomplished ghost stories and a topographical survey of Worcestershire. He also wrote polemics about the plight of the craftsman in a world which relied increasingly upon mass production.

In this book, the first full-length biography of Tom Rolt and a complement to his auto-biographical Landscape trilogy, Dr Victoria Owens draws upon his surviving letters and unpublished manuscripts to tell the story of the engineer-turned-writer who made Britain’s industrial past the stuff of enduring literature.

About the Speaker

A member of the Newcomen Society, Dr Victoria Owens has worked in local government and the book trade. Now an independent scholar, her book Lady Charlotte Guest – the exceptional life of a female industrialist was shortlisted for the 2021 Wales Book of the Year and won the non-fiction award. Her other publications include James Brindley and the Duke of Bridgewater: Canal Visionaries (Amberley Publishing 2015) and Aqueducts and Viaducts of Britain (Amberley Publishing 2019).

Victoria’s latest publication, The Life of L.T.C Tom Rolt, came out in 2024.