Landscape Trilogy: The autobiography of L. T. C. Rolt, The

Journal of Transport History, The, Sep 2003 by Divall, Colin

L. T. C. Roll, The Landscape Trilogy: the autobiography of L. T. C. Rolt, with an introduction by Sonia Rolt, Sutton Publishing, Stroud (2001), L25.00.

L. T. C. (Tom) Rolt is still quite widely read as a historian of British industrialisation and for his biographies of several of the leading engineers of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He was also one of the pioneers of the movement which from the early 1950s saw amateurs taking over redundant railway lines in Britain and running them for leisure purposes - what became the present-day heritage railway industry. Rolt was also a key advocate in the immediate post-war years for the retention of the largely moribund system of inland waterways, although here serious disagreements with other leading figures in the Inland Waterways Association (of which he was a founding member) reduced his influence for many years. A lifelong interest m vintage cars and industrial archaeology were other examples of the many and varied aspects of Rolt's life, with a strong transport connection.

All these aspects are covered in this welcome reissue, but the real value of Rolt's autobiography lies in the opportunity to understand how these concerns fitted into his philosophical and political views on the nature of industrialisation. A thinker in the tradition of people like the English ruralist and critic of mass production H. J. Massingham, Rolt was a man fascinated by the ingenuity of engineers and the potential of the machines they developed, yet increasingly disenchanted with the standardised and bureaucratised world to which they contributed. This book includes all the text from the original three volumes (the first published m 1971 while Rolt was still alive, the others posthumously, in 1977 and 1992), but not all the photographs are the same. Otherwise the volume is a straight reprint, retaining the original pagination and different typefaces, plus a brief introduction by Rolt's second wile explaining the background to Rolt's decision to write about his life and the subsequent history of publication. There is no index. Anyone fortunate enough to have the original volumes will find little need for the reissue, but otherwise this is a handsome package, reasonably priced and near essential - and enjoyable - reading for anyone interested in the history of the public history of transport in Britain.

Colin Divall, Institute of Railway Studies and Transport History, York